The Hindu : New Delhi News : For a life of respect and dignity

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Sep 27, 2004

New Delhi

New Delhi

For a life of respect and dignity

By Our Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI, SEPT. 26. Raj Kapoor Rawat of Ghazipur in Uttar Pradesh runs an Ayurvedic clinic in his town and has also successfully organised the scavenger community who are demanding their right to lead a life of respect and dignity. The son of a scavenger himself, he is a postgraduate and is well aware of his rights and responsibilities.

Hailing from the same area is Raj Kumar, a successful lawyer, who also has come up by dint of hard work and merit. Burning the midnight oil while his mother worked as a safai karamchari, he has seen very "dark days'' and wants to emancipate many of his folk from the drudgery they have to undergo day in and day out. He runs a school for children of the scavenger community.

Indeed, there are many like Raj Kapoor and Raj Kumar, who though born as sons to safai karamcharis, have had a decent education and are now trying to earn a place for themselves in society. The duo try and motivate the safai karamcharis to take to alternate vocations so that they no longer carry on with the occupation with which they have come to be identified with.

But respect and honour do not come easily to them in a society which is caste and class conscious and therefore, to retain their pride and self-esteem and to ensure that others like him do so is a daily battle for people like them. And lending support to their struggle is the Delhi-based Social Development Foundation which aims to empower struggling people at the grassroots and to develop their leadership. "I have recently made a film on people like Raj Kapoor and Raj Kumar who though belonging to a community of scavengers have turned their lives into a success,'' said V. B. Rawat, who is also making an attempt to profile such people and bring them to the limelight.

However, the odds are still stacked heavily against the scavengers, many of whom have to continue carrying the night soil over their heads despite their being a ban on the practice. And in States like West Bengal, it even has Government sanction. Fighting against the denial of rights to the safai karamcharis in the Howrah Municipal Corporation is Kishan Balmiki, who has been running the "Dalit Salvation Movement'' for two decades now. "People like Kishan are isolated in their struggle. It is our aim to provide them solidarity and to ensure that their movement grows by the strength of networking,'' pointed out Mr. Rawat.

With many scavenger families displaced in a recent beautification drive carried out in Howrah, Mr. Rawat argued that the only way to ensure that their voice reaches the "high and mighty'' in Delhi is to ensure that the wider land rights movement across the country incorporated their concerns as well. "We are also trying to ensure that gender concerns are adequately reflected in the struggle for land rights,'' he added.

And to step up advocacy so that the scavenger community feel positively empowered, Mr. Rawat has been focussing on the achievers in "Hum Dalit'', a magazine of the Indian Social Institute, as also making an attempt to bring out a white paper on their situation.

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