ALOT of my current work is in small towns and villages. One town I work in, and with, closely is a small town in the backwaters of Andhra Pradesh. This little town has a unique and clean little street right next to an otherwise dirty downtown centre; even if the uniqueness is marred somewhat by the unfortunate name of the street — “Scavengers’ street”. Deployment of the term ‘scavangers’ for those who clean our streets and remove human waste is our home-grown terminology; used extensively even in our daily vocabulary. There are any number of government of India reports, press reports and even textbooks that use this unfortunate term freely. Similarly, bhangi is another regrettable term frequently used in the same vein, particularly in the north of the country. The very capital of the country has a ‘Bhangi colony’. Considering we are a country, over half of whose population seems to enjoy nothing more than an open-air defecation, a deprecatory usage of the term (even if it is often unwitting) for those who engage in clearing our surroundings is more than merely ironic. One would think that it is those who soil the milieu that ought to be the object of witting or unwitting derision; and not those who clean up the filth. What is more, in any well-known dictionary, such as Chambers or Oxford, ‘scavenger’ has only one of the two meanings: either those who forage in other people’s rubbish for food or other things, or, animals that feed on dead animals not killed by them. So the term scavenger, its deprecatory undertone or overtone apart, hardly describes the task in question, assuming the term must describe the vocation. What about the other term that we use with equal facility to describe those who help keep our villages, towns and cities clean, namely, Sweepers? Surely the term describes the vocation better? Perhaps; but it is barely any less insensitive. How about ‘janitor’? But a janitor is more truly a building’s caretaker. Mahatma Gandhi meant well and used the term Harijan. But the well meaning usage of the great man today has been reduced to a mere caste equivalent. So then which term describes the vocation best and is yet sensitive and dignified as much to the vocation as to its practitioners? How about cleaners? Those who clean the roads, villages and towns can only be cleaners, right? The term also puts matters in perspective. Those who clean are the cleaners and those who dirty are the ‘dirtiers’. The term is implicitly respectful of those who clean, in contrast to those who ‘dirty’. Will our parliamentarians, when they are not rushing into the ‘well’ of the House next time, pass a Bill banning the usage of terms like scavengers, bhangis and sweepers, at least in government documents? Will all of us, if we consider ourselves enlightened, consider such terms and their regional equivalents, socially, politically and humanly inappropriate? Will we do to these terms what they did successfully in the US to various deprecatory racial terms? We frequently express our concern at the socio-economic development of the underprivileged. But the real development must first happen in our attitudes. It is only when our attitude to cleanliness changes that our attitude to cleaners will change. It is only then will we make our cleaners better paid; only then will we provide full protective gear to those who dive naked into city sewers and manholes for cleaning; only then will we provide gum-boots and gloves and aprons to municipal cleaners who stand knee deep in muck in the undescribably dirty municipal garbage trucks. Also only then will we learn to provide them with ergonomically and sanitationwise superior tools for cleaning in a manner that provides dignity to a labour that this nation needs more than anything else. Yes, more than education, more than health, more than food, our country needs cleanliness. More than our poverty, our illiteracy, and our corruption, it is our filth and squalor that shames us most in the world community. And those who rid of this filth must be treated far better than we do. Yes, we need to learn to celebrate cleaners. So what can we do in concrete terms to give community cleanliness greater dignity? Those of us in suitable positions could begin working with institutions and work places under our care to explore if employees can take turns voluntarily (with points awarded in the performance management system) to clean the work-toilets themselves, once a week, say, on Saturdays. Needless to say, unless those of us who promote such a system are directly involved in such labour, the idea will not pick up. Yes, I am talking about reinventing Gandhi. Can the movement become a part of corporate social responsibility?
(The author is CEO, GMR Varalaskhmi Foundation. Views are personal.)
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