I was born in 1957, ten years after India’s Independence. At that time, despite Mahatma Gandhi’s call for emancipation, it was the Harijan men and women who went door to door to collect human excreta in a large tin or an earthen pot that they would then carry on their head to a different location. These men and women were paid by the municipalities to do this work.
I have seen the practice as late as 1969 when, as a little boy, I watched them come and go. Twenty two years after Independence—how could we remain blind to this unimaginable act of human beings having to carry on their head, the excreta of fellow humans as their profession? Can you imagine that among us today, are their progeny who much rather not remember that such professions existed in a free country? You might say, this was only in the past. Think again as you drive to work today. It has just barely changed.
Look closely at the men who hang from the back of the scavenger trucks in our metropolis. Clothes smeared with dirt—face blackened with garbage. These men, bare foot and barehanded, pick up wet garbage from dustbins, load these trucks and travel with the garbage to its final destination. They do not have the ignominy of carrying human refuse on their head, but the risks to their health is just as real.
Fifty eight years after Independence, we are just as insensitive to the phenomenon as were our parents who found the previous arrangement as convenient. The role of the municipality has changed—it has outsourced the entire thing to a contractor and it is the contractor’s job to manage the process. In what way is the man doing the work different from you and I? It is just the accident of his birth that places him where he is.
To me, empowerment means liberating India of this convenient social exploitation. It is a disgrace to me and my social conscience. It is a disgrace to the system I have built. It is a disgrace to the words government and democracy. Earlier, the ‘‘untouchables’’ had names and faces. Today, they still exist—but they have been granted Constitutional anonymity.
Now I want to talk to you about the other untouchables—our women. When I first started traveling outside India, I realized that most women on streets in India, while going about their daily work, walk with their eyes downcast. Everywhere else in the world, they look straight ahead. However educated she may be, if she is alone on a road, if she is traveling in a train, wherever she might be—the Indian woman looks down. It is a necessary defence against Indian men. You will not see this in any developed country.
Fifty-eight years after Independence, our women—of whom we are born, do not walk safe. Two years ago, a young Japanese woman who wanted to discover India, stayed with us. One day, I asked her what she found as things she liked about India and what was that one thing she did not like? She told me the usual things all tourists say they like about India. The one thing she said she did not like, made me hang my head in shame. She said, if you are a foreigner and a young woman and you happen to travel alone in India, every one concludes that you are available for sex! She was disgusted. I have met many educated women of various ages who come to India as visitors. They all tell me the same.
Finally, in my empowered India, people will be valued not just for mental work but for physical work they do. People who perform physical work, will be paid respectable wages that make basic comforts in life as accessible to them as they are to you and I. One day, I got down at the Orly airport in France and was picked up by a cab driver. The man was as well dressed as any one else. We got chatting on the way as he was driving me to a hotel near Versailles where I had a conference to attend. Next to my hotel, stood an even more beautiful hotel and pointing it out to me, the man said, that is where his wedding took place. I was simply amazed.
When will it be in India that a taxi driver in Mumbai or New Delhi can dress up half as well as you and I? When can he take his family to enjoy the same holiday destination that you and I go to? When will it be that the maid who comes to clean the house can dress up half as well as you and I without being suspected of thievery?
To me, India will be emancipated and empowered when the man scavenging on the municipal truck will work in sanitary conditions comparable with any developed country and is paid half as well as an entry-level software engineer. In an empowered India, women will not have to lower their eyes when they walk past a stranger, lest they be presumed to be available for solicitation. In that India, we will not underpay people who work with their hands and make a living with their skills. Till such time that we do not recognize the importance of these things, we will not be an empowered nation.
I was born in 1957, ten years after India’s Independence. At that time, despite Mahatma Gandhi’s call for emancipation, it was the Harijan men and women who went door to door to collect human excreta in a large tin or an earthen pot that they would then carry on their head to a different location. These men and women were paid by the municipalities to do this work.