The Safai Karamchari Andolan (SKA) has questioned the government’s silence and delays in ending manual scavenging in India. Highlighting the death of 101 people across the country since January 2026 while engaged in manually cleaning sewers and septic tanks, SKA said that its figure – 121 deaths for the whole of 2025 – showed the situation was worsening.
“In 2016, only 39 deaths were reported, which jumped by 350% next year in 2017 to 137 deaths,” said the statement. It said over 1,726 deaths have been reported across the country since 2013. It said a sanitation worker’s death is being reported while cleaning sewers and septic tanks, on average, “every 45 hours”, while governments choose “shameless” silence.
India ranks very poorly in terms of its global sanitation status, for which are responsible lack of scientific cleaning methods and planning and caste- and gender-based inequality, as acknowledged by UNICEF, the Indian government’s partner in Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, in 2020.
09/07/2026