ForumIAS announcing GS Foundation Program for UPSC CSE 2025-26 from 19 April. Click Here for more information.
ForumIAS Answer Writing Focus Group (AWFG) for Mains 2024 commencing from 24th June 2024. The Entrance Test for the program will be held on 28th April 2024 at 9 AM. To know more about the program visit: https://forumias.com/blog/awfg2024
Context
To achieve the mission of a clean India , there is a need to break the link between caste and occupation.
Link between caste and occupation : Manual scavenging
- In India, there is an inexorable link between occupation and caste; the occupation of manual scavenging is linked with caste.
- We have to break the link between caste and occupation before we set out to achieve Swachh Bharat.
- We have made certain communities from particular castes clean the country.
- Without breaking the chain, those who make Bharat swachh will never be a part of the campaign.
- We need to come out openly and say that caste is the root cause of the problem we wishe to annihilate.
- Constitution has declared the abolition of untouchability in Article 17, it is still practised by perpetuating occupations such as scavenging.
- In the Indian context, manual scavenging is a misery, drudgery, so one cannot worship it.
- One has to begin by recasting society and its target, reconstructing society first by breaking the links between occupation castes.
What are the challenges?
- People are not using toilets because they neither have access nor the capacity to use one. We cannot organise campaigns to shame them.
- If the priority is poor, let them choose what they want. The Constitution says the state cannot interfere in people’s lives.
- But by appointing whistle-blowers who shame those who do not use toilets, the state is terrorising people.
- Then, let us come to the toilets being constructed. Each toilet requires a septic tank. Instead of modernising the sewer lines and septic tanks and investing money and energy on smart techniques of sanitation, we are adding more problems to the existing problem.
- People who have given up their lives in keeping Bharat clean, we have not spoken about their Right to Life.
- The sewers are being cleaned by those very people shamed in the campaign.
- Every month, there is news about people dying in manholes after being ordered to clean them. This needs to be addressed.
