in february 37yearold narayana a municipal sweeper in karnataka died by suicide he had been forced to clean a manhole with his bare hands and to add to this indignity civic officials in maddur pressured him to tell the inquiry committee that he did it voluntarily it was this reported harassment by officials who had docked his salary and placed him under suspension that drove him to breaking pointlike narayana manual scavengers continue to die with sickening regularity across the country on march 26 two workers died while cleaning a septic tank in an east delhi banquet hall in february four sanitation workers asphyxiated to death while desilting a sewer line in kolkatas kudghat while three men died cleaning a septic tank near chennai on february 14 between 2016 and 2019 the government has recorded 282 deaths but activists say that the actual numbers are far higher on an average one sanitation worker dies every 5 days according to research by ngo rehabilitation research initiative rri based on fieldwork and interviews with the manual scavenging communityconviction rate is lowbut beside the occasional news report why isnt anything done although there has been unprecedented priority given to sanitation under the swachh bharat mission since 2014 by 2019 the government had already spent over rs 57000 crore to build nine crore toilets researcher and activist sheeva dubey who has been studying the condition of sanitation workers in mumbai since 2015 says money has been spent on infrastructure but not on people who are involved in the process of cleaning in most cases the work to clean a clogged drain or septic tank is contracted privately by a housing society or a company there is no provision for safety equipment or emergency assistance often if there is a death the first responders usually the police do not even bother to register a case and write it off as an accident she says centre for policy research fellow arkaja singh who has been working on the issue of sanitation labour and rights of manual scavengers recalls a case when three sewerage workers died in april 2017 in delhis lajpat nagar though the sewerage line belonged to the delhi jal board it distanced itself saying that the workers had not been contracted either by the djb or its contractor there was no liability proved for anyone except for the workers who died she saysironically while india was under lockdown sanitation workers were expected to continue working whether it was to dispose of hazardous waste like masks ppes of patients or cleaning drains and pipelines in housing societiesslow adoption of botspeople continue to do this hazardous work despite technological advancements in 2018 keralabased startup genrobotics developed a robot to clean septic tanks and manholes priced at rs 40 lakh the robot can be customised to fit each citys manholes and unclog 10 a day without any human intervention the technology is costeffective says cofounder rashid k and one robot is able to clean 200