Just another headline
‘Teen and contractor cleaning septic tank killed in the city’. They died after allegedly inhaling toxic gases in the tank, which they were doing without any safety equipment. This was just another headline on the Sunday TOI front page on 27 July 2025 . I did sit and ponder over it for a while, a little longer than on the other headlines, but besides that, I cannot do much. These incidents happen every now and then, are reported, pondered over and then put aside. It is the same when you use public washrooms and the person cleaning it is not adequately equipped to stay in that air, laden with stink and bacteria, nor do they have any gloves. Manual scavenging is prohibited in India under The Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, 2013, but in India, particularly in the north, this law, like many others, is ineffective to the point of being irrelevant. Plus, from what I understand, the act bans only ‘hazardous’ cleaning – as long as protective gea...
