India abolished manual scavenging by law in 2013, yet people still die inside sewers and septic tanks. The gap between that law and the daily reality is a textbook case for the Anthropology Optional, because it joins caste, occupation and what scholars call structural violence.
Source: Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment replies in the Rajya Sabha, as reported by Siasat and PTI, and the Supreme Court judgment in Dr. Balram Singh v. Union of India (20 October 2023), as reported by LiveLaw. Evidence level: press reports of parliamentary replies and law-reporter summaries. Source basis: press reports of the judgment and of the Parliament reply; the judgment text and the February 2025 state-wise annexure were not reviewed.
What Parliament has been told
Minister of State for Social Justice and Empowerment Ramdas Athawale told the Rajya Sabha that 377 people died while cleaning sewers and septic tanks in the five years from 2019 to 2023. In the same reply, he said there was no report of the practice of manual scavenging in the country. A separate PTI report of a 2024 reply put the cumulative toll at 1,248 deaths since 1993.
These numbers come from different replies and cover different windows, so they do not add up. Always quote the window and the reply. Some figures circulate in news items. One is a 315 total for 2021 to 2025, and another is a state-wise ranking led by Maharashtra. Neither figure could be matched to a reply that could be read, so both are left out. The Rajya Sabha question of 3 February 2025 carries a state-wise annexure for 2020 to 2024. Check it before using any state figure in print.
Why “hundreds of deaths” and “no manual scavenging” can both be official
The apparent contradiction rests on definitions. The Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, 2013 bars manual scavenging. Under section 7 it also bars the hazardous cleaning of sewers and septic tanks without safeguards. That hazardous cleaning is where the deaths occur. Critics argue that government counting does not treat workers who regularly enter sewers and tanks as manual scavengers.
In Dr. Balram Singh v. Union of India (20 October 2023), the Supreme Court directed that compensation for sewer-cleaning deaths rise to Rs 30 lakh and issued directions to enforce the 2013 Act. LiveLaw later reported a clarification that the Rs 30 lakh figure also applies to earlier deaths where nobody had yet determined or paid compensation. Petitioners, in a March 2024 response to a status report, said that states had not shown disbursement of the enhanced amounts.
An anthropological reading
M.N. Srinivas showed how the ritual hierarchy of purity and pollution can translate into an occupational hierarchy of dignity and degradation. Even after legal abolition, the work persists through informal and contractual labour. Thus cultural patterns of inequality adapt to economic modernisation. André Béteille called the resulting distance between constitutional ideals and social reality a defining contradiction of Indian society.
Structural violence is a useful term here, since no single villain causes these deaths. Hierarchy, contracting practices and indifference together produce them. Denying “manual scavenging deaths” is a form of epistemic blindness rooted in caste denialism. A meaningful response has to go beyond a mechanical idea of cleanliness and include the dignity of those who clean.
Using it in UPSC Mains
This case belongs to Paper 2, which covers caste, social stratification and Indian social problems. It also covers the constitutional safeguards for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes. Clause 3.2 on the caste system supplies the concepts, and the issue also serves GS Paper 2 on social justice. Cite the parliamentary window and the Supreme Court judgment with Srinivas and Béteille to show the gap between legal abolition and social practice.
The closest PYQs are exploitation of Scheduled Castes in India (2016, Paper 2) and constitutional safeguards for Scheduled Castes (2020, Paper 2). Neither names manual scavenging, so use the case as the contemporary example inside the answer. Browse the topic page on Indian society, caste and civilization, the Paper 2 syllabus roadmap, the PYQ analysis and the complete optional guide.
Sources
Siasat report on the 377 deaths reply; PTI report via The Week (1,248 since 1993); Rajya Sabha question 267 of 3 February 2025; LiveLaw on Balram Singh (2023).