Scavengers and Their Awareness about National Scheme for Liberation and Rehabilitation (NSLRS) – A Case of Haryana

The country has made multifaceted development in almost all areas since its independence. The concerning matter is that despite achievements, the country has not made desired progress in the area of social justice and social development. While a parliamentary law bans the manual scavenging and the government approves projects to wean the underprivileged section away from this dehumanizing occupation, cruel caste apartheid and brutalizing poverty perpetuate the practice (Sunil Kuksal, 2009). At the onset of new century even after 62 years of independence and 16th years of passing ‗the Employment of Manual Scavengers and Construction of Dry Latrine (Prohibition) Act, the irony is that a few people of Scheduled Castes and among other religions are still involved in the hereditary occupation of manual scavenging. This occupation is despicable and degrading for those involved in it. (Akash Gulalia 2003) In this way, the practice of scavenging is rooted deeply in the traditional social and economic obligations of different castes and sub-castes and therefore the liberation of scavengers from unclean occupation implies breaking up of traditional bondages which many scavengers may not like. The liberation of scavengers is closely linked with its economic implications. (quoted from T. M. Dak, 2006-07). As elaborated by Trivedi Harshand R. (1976) in his study ―Scheduled Caste Women: A Study In Exploitation‖ that the occupation of scavenging has been traditionally associated with female members even in rural areas. In brief, in the states of Gujrat, Andhra Pradesh and Mysore, there are about 30% to 40% of female engaged in scavenging. On the other hand, the percentage of females engaged in this occupation in rural areas in the states of Utter Pradesh, Rajasthan, Punjab, Orissa, Mysore and Madhya Pradesh comes to about 45% to 65% as compared with males. Jayant Sarkar (1984) conducted a study on ―Sweeping/ Scavenging: Occupation of an immigrant of Shillong Town‖. Sweeping/ scavenging and allied occupations in different cities and towns of India are pursued by some particular castes of the respective areas. These cases have been categorized as Scheduled Castes of that area. Some tribes also have taken up this occupation in Hilly areas/towns of North India. In Churachandpur, the town committee (functioning as municipality) has recruited for the first time only two sweepers and both of them belong to the Kabui Naga tribe. In Silchar town of the Cachar district, the sweepers are mostly Nagas. In the towns of Aijol, Mizoram, the Mizos are the only group who work as sweepers. For this, the author collected information from 168 sweepers (153 Sikhs & 15 Hindus), to get a picture of the nature of immigration and the nature of monopolising the occupation, who employed in Shillong Municipality and Shillong‘ Cantonment Board. The entire sweepers live in three colonies, i.e. 1). Gora line colony; 2) Bara Bazar sweeper‘ colony and 3) the quarters of cantonment board. The data shows that 162 sweepers came from two districts of Punjab, namely- Amritsar (99) and Gurdaspur (63) and 6

organization and political activities of the sweepers of Shillong. Lastly, it is observed in the study that sweeping occupation has been monopolized by Punjabi-speaking people, especially Sikhs, originally belonged to landless Mazhbi group. Shyam Lal (1984) conducted a study, ―The Bhangis in Transition‖ in Rajasthan. His study shows that to some extent, the Bhangi Caste, which has been performing night soil work, has given up this job in Jodhpur. There are some evidences of changes from traditional to non-traditional occupations among the Bhangis. Bindeshwar Pathak (1991) pointed out in his study, named- ―Road to Freedom‖ that the scavengers were placed at the lowest rung of the caste ladder. The nature of work traditionally associated with them or imposed upon them to the lowest stratum of the social hierarchy of exterior castes. The task of cleaning night soil was the most inferior job because this involved the touching of human excreta by the scavengers. Consequently, they didn‘t get social justice and human treatment. Rama Sharma (1995) conducted a study about the Bhangi of Delhi under title ―Occupational Mobility- Change and Continuity.‖ About 300 families were interviewed to examine the shifting away from traditional occupation of sweeping & scavenging. The occupations are categorized into two categories, i.e. 1. Skilled manual work, small business and supervisory work have been placed in first category and professions of sweeping & scavenging have been placed in the second category, i.e. unskilled manual work. In the study, 300 respondents were interviewed by using stratified sampling method. It is found in the study that 69.3% respondents engaged in the unskilled manual labour. Sachchidananda (2001)‘s work ―People at the Bottom: A Portrait of the Scavengers‖ is based on an a empirical study covering 2500 households in urban and rural settings in Bihar. It is intended to give a glimpse of the living and working conditions of the scavenger castes and to bring out the impact of different welfare programmes for their liberation and rehabilitation in the gender and human rights perspectives. Ram Gopal Singh (2004) conducted a study, under title ―Status of Scavenging and Scavengers in Madhya Pradesh‖. He highlighted the status of scavenging and scavengers in Madhya Pradesh. He recommends some important measures to improve the condition of scavengers that are as. Many of the sanitary problems arise either due to deficient or careless urban planning. Secondly, conversion of dry latrines into water seal latrines should be made mandatory for the owners of the household. Lastly, he advised that Government should involve NGOs or public institutions or voluntary organizations who can accomplish their work more satisfactorily, in such tasks as conversion of dry latrines in to leach pit or low cot pour flush water seal latrines and rehabilitation of liberated and non- 138 non beneficiaries, entitled, ―Impact of Scheme of Training and Rehabilitation on Socioeconomic Improvement of Scavengers in Rajsthan‖ He tried to meet mainly four objective, namely- 1 to find out the socioeconomic profile of the scavengers and the nature of occupational services being offered by them in rural and urban areas, 2 to find out magnitude of different policy interventions and their differential acceptance, 3 to assess the impact of different policy intervention particularly acceptance of the scheme of training and rehabilitation of scavengers on the labour absorption, occupational mobility and improvement in socioeconomic conditions of the group, and 4 to locate emerging changes in the caste relations, gender differences and inter-generational adjustments among scavengers as a consequence of policy interventions . The study shows that the sampled respondents concentrated more in Harijan Basties irrespective of their institutional affiliations and habitat, are overwhelmingly middle aged, illiterates or literate only, married and members of joint family with moderate family size and pursue scavenging and service as main sources of family income. The study concluded that the scavengers are continued segregated and secluded in harijan basties. Moreover despite liberation from manual scavenging, the majority continue to perform jobs related to scavenging in one or other way. The related literature shows that there is a voluminous literature which deals with the scavenging and scavengers in India, but there is no more study that gives comprehensive picture to understand the problem of scavenging and also to examine the nature and progress of the rehabilitation of the liberated scavengers in urban Haryana into alternative trades and corresponding changes in the pattern of their life and living. The erudite contributors though may have arrived at a myriad of conclusions according to the gamut of their study; there are no doubts the scavenger, the most neglected section among the dalits, are slowly yet steadily moving towards caste-free occupations. They are, of course, quite willing to liberate themselves provided they are given an opportunity, a helping hand from the government and the larger society. That is what makes us more optimistic that this endeavourer of ours while on the one hand would lead to more empirical studies on a problem of such magnitude in all its social, economic and political dimensions it would, on the other, open a window for the policy makers and implementing agencies to look afresh at the various schemes for the upliftment of the scavengers, to re-engineer them, to make them more effective and result oriented.

Awareness constitutes one of the most important endogenous variables in understanding the responses of the scavengers towards the rehabilitation scheme because the greater the awareness among the beneficiaries, the higher the utilization of the facilities meant for them. As pointed out earlier that the study of the liberation of scavengers from manual removal of night soil and their rehabilitation in alternative occupations was carried out in Urban Haryana from the perspectives of beneficiaries who took training for adopting alternative occupations, drawn from different districts that have not homogeneity in each other and reside different residential areas i.e The important fact is that the Government of India adopted a three-pronged strategy to liberate and rehabilitate scavengers involved in manual cleaning of night soil: a) legislative backup in the form of the Employment of Manual Scavengers and Construction of Dry Latrines (Prohibition) Act 1993 prohibiting construction of dry latrines and manual scavenging; b) conversion of dry latrines into flush latrines through a central Low Cost Sanitation Scheme of Liberation of Scavengers under which loans and subsidies are offered for the construction of flush latrines, and c) introduction of "National Scheme of Liberation and Rehabilitation of Scavengers and their Dependents" for training of liberated scavengers and their rehabilitation in alternative occupations. Thus, this paper is devoted to know the awareness about the provisions of ―The Employment of Manual Scavengers and Construction of Dry Latrine (Prohibition) Act, 1993‖ and contents of the programme of liberation and rehabilitation among scavengers. It is hypothesis that the impact of rehabilitation scheme depends on the awareness level of the scavengers that is affected by many socio-economic factors on the basis of which the researcher conducted the study. It is already told that several programs were initiated by the Govt. to liberate scavengers from unclean occupation of lifting night soil and to rehabilitate them in alternative occupations. The programs, like prohibition of construction of dry latrines and conversion of dry latrines into water borne flush latrines and scheme of pre-matric scholarship to the children of scavengers, comes in the categories of group oriented programmes. These tend to benefit all the scavengers, irrespective of the fact whether they are liberated or unliberated, while the program of rehabilitation of the scavengers come in the category of individual beneficiary program. To become a beneficiary of these measures, awareness about them is a prerequisite. Thus, the present paper discusses the knowledge of beneficiaries or scavengers about the scheme and its impact with the help of the results of associated selected socio-economic factors and awareness about rehabilitation scheme among respondents. An effort was, therefore, made to find out whether or not the respondents are aware about the this paper.

Methodology not only systematizes the research but also determine the selection of units , techniques of the data collection , analysis and research involves numerous steps and each step has various ways to be pursued and methodology guides us in our choice of these ways in a given context. In brief, methodology is a detailed blueprint for doing research. The present study is carried out in the urban areas of Haryana. However, this study is a humble effort to assess the level of awareness about the rehabilitation scheme on the Scavengers in urban Haryana. To understand this social phenomenon the researcher has formulated the following objectives:

1. To know the awareness level of the scavengers about the rehabilitation scheme 2. To analyse the measures of the scheme.

As pointed out earlier, it is desirable here to examine the awareness about rehabilitation programmes among scavengers. To explore this aspect in greater details, a numbers of probing questions were posed to them. The respondents when asked whether they are aware of the question ―Do you know about the ‗National Scheme for Liberation and Rehabilitation of Scavengers, the responses in this regard are shown in table 1.1.

respondents know about such a scheme while 58.8 % have not knowledge about such scheme. An examination of above chi-square table (1.1) revealed that there is no significant difference between districts of the respondents and the knowledge about NSLRS as calculated value of chi-square i.e. 4.110, df-4 at 5% level of significance is not higher than the table value, i.e. 9.49. Thus, it supports the null hypotheses.

Again in reference to the question, ‗Is NSLRS implemented in Haryana, 35.7% of the total respondents said yes in this regard than their counterparts. Again, the examination of chi-square table revealed that there is no significant difference between respondent‘s districts and the question about awareness, i.e. ‗Is NSLRS implemented in Haryana‘, as the chi-square value, i.e. 1.749, is less than the critical value, i.e. 9.49, for 4 degree of freedom, at .05 levels of significance. Thus, it accepted the null hypothesis.

The above table indicates that only 15.4% respondents have known about subsidy, margin money and bank loan amount that is given by Govt. to the scavengers for adopting or choosing new self-generated income occupation while 84.6% have not known about such provisions. The above chi-square statistics show that the chi-square value (2 =1.625, df=4, p>.05) is not significant, hence it accepted the null hypothesis. Thus, there is no association between the districts of the respondents and the knowledge of the components of scheme, like subsidy, margin money and bank loan amounts.

Again, Knowledge about the chief who is responsible for implementing the NSLRS at the district level? The study exposed that the only 32 % respondents know about such. The study revealed that the respondents‘ districts are not found statistically significant as calculated value of chi-square i.e. 2.336, df-4 at 5% level of significance is less than the table value, i.e. 9.49. So, the null hypothesis is accepted.

In response to the question, ―Do you know about any low cost sanitation scheme that convert all dry latrines constructing such new latrines where it does not exist, launched by govt.?‖, it is found in the study that only 17.3 % respondents have in ‗yes‘ answer while rest go in ‗no‘ side answer. It is found in the study that districts of the respondents are found statistically significant with above question, i.e. knowledge of low cost sanitation scheme as calculated value of chi-square i.e. 20.737, df-4 at 5% level of significance is higher than table value, i.e. 9.49. The chi-square analysis shows that the respondents of Ambala and Kurukshetra, are found significant in the knowledge of such questions than their counterparts.

The above table shows the interest of scavengers in general sense about sanitation and health. It is found in the study in this regard that 49.4% respondents have seen Sulabh Technology Latrine Model (Twin Pitch) while 6.5% respondents have not seen this model, 42.4 % respondents said that they have no knowledge about such model. Again the chi-square table revealed that the sexes of the respondents are not found statistically significant as calculated value of chi-square i.e. 4.740, df-4 at 5% level of significance, is lower than the table value, i.e. 9.49. So, null hypothesis is accepted. Thus there is no significant relationship between observed and expected frequency. Therefore, it can be concluded that there is no significant relationship between the districts of the respondents and the knowledge of Twin Pitch Latrine Model.

In reference to the question, Do you know about "The Employment of Manual Scavengers and Construction of Dry Latrines (Prohibition) Act", 1993, the above table shows that merely 12.8% of the total respondents know such act. Again the chi-square table revealed that the districts of the respondents are not found statistically significant as calculated value of chi-square i.e. 7.149, df-4 at 5% level of significance, is lower than the table value, i.e. 9.49. So, null hypothesis is accepted. Thus there is no significant relationship between observed and expected frequency. Therefore, it can be concluded that there is no significant relationship between the districts of the respondents and the knowledge of "The Employment of Manual Scavengers and Construction of Dry Latrines (Prohibition) Act", 1993.

In response to the question, ―Do you know the name of any commission or committee which is appointed by govt. of India or Haryana for scavengers?‖ the above table shows that merely 0.7% of the total respondents know such committee or commission. Again the chi-square table revealed that the study revealed that the districts of the respondents are not significant due to their less calculated value of chi-square i.e. 2.473 at df-4 in spite of table value, i.e. 9.49. Hence, there is no significant relationship between respondents‘ districts and the knowledge of any Commission or Committee of Scavengers which is appointed by govt. of India or Haryana. Thus, it supports the null hypotheses.

In response to the question, ―Do you know about ‗'Haryana Harijan Kalyan Nigam (HHKN)? Only 42.2 % respondents have known about this while rests of the respondents, i.e. 57.8 % are not aware about this. An examination of above chi-square table (1.9) revealed that there is no significant difference between districts of the respondents and the knowledge about ‗'Haryana Harijan Kalyan Nigam (HHKN) as calculated value of chi-square i.e. 3.041, df-4 at 5% level of significance is higher than the table value, i.e. 9.49. Thus, it supports the null hypotheses.

Again, when asked, is it renamed now as Scheduled Castes Development and Financial Corporation? The study shows the interesting information about such question and found that 43.9 % respondents have accepted that it is renamed now as Scheduled Caste Development and Financial Corporation. The above chi-square statistics show that the chi-square value (2 =3.888, df=4, p>.05) is not significant, hence it accepted the null hypothesis. Thus, there is no association between the districts of the respondents and the knowledge of the renaming of ‗'Haryana Harijan Kalyan Nigam (HHKN) as Scheduled Castes Development and Financial Corporation.

In response to the question, ―Do you know about ‗The National Safai Karamcharis Finance and Development Corporation (NSKFDC)‘? Only 17.6% respondents have known about this corporation while rests of the respondents, i.e. 82.4% are not aware about such corporation. The above chi-square table shows that the table value of chi-square for df 4, at 0.05 level of significance is 9.49. The calculated value of chi-square, i.e. 6.940, is less than the table value. Hence, there is no significant relationship between the districts of the respondents and the knowledge of ‗The National Safai Karamcharis Finance and Development Corporation (NSKFDC)‘. Thus, it supports the null hypothesis.

The study revealed that the only 41.2 % respondents have known about National Scheme for Liberation and Rehabilitation of Scavengers. Only 35.7 % said that it is implemented in Haryana. The study exposed that the only 15.4% have knowledge about the various components of the scheme- subsidy, margin money and bank loan amount etc.. 32% have Knowledge about the chief who is responsible for implementing the NSLRS at the district level. Only 17.3 % respondents have information about low cost sanitation scheme that convert all dry latrines into water-seal pour flush. It is found in the study that 49.4% respondents have seen Sulabh Technology Latrine Model (Twin Pitch). The above table shows that merely 12.8% of the total respondents know such act. The study indicates that merely 0.7% of the total respondents know any commission and committee which is appointed by the govt. of india and Haryana. Only 42.2 % respondents have knowledge about the accepted that it is renamed now as Scheduled Caste Development and Financial Corporation. Only 17.6% respondents have known The National Safai Karamcharis Finance and Development Corporation (NSKFDC) whereas 82.4% are not aware about such corporation. On the basis of observations of data it may be concluded that in spite of the efforts of the govt. and other agencies the scavenging community is still not very much aware about the scheme and its related benefits.

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Assistant Professor of Sociology, Govt. College for Girls Sector – 14, Panchkula, Haryana