[Sunday’s deaths occurred at DLF Capital Greens, a gated community catering to the aspirations of India’s wealthy. Nearby are BMW, Jaguar and Land Rover dealerships. Across the road from the cream-colored towers are several ornate banquet halls, including one called the “Golden Royale” featuring a glittering three-story chandelier.]
By Joanna Slater
His friend, Vishal Pasi, was disoriented and
covered in muck from head to toe. “I can’t breathe,” Pasi told him haltingly.
Within hours, Pasi was dead, along with four
other young men who also entered the sewage tanks at a posh new apartment
complex in India’s capital on Sunday. Police sa y the five sewage workers
asphyxiated and drowned.
Their deaths were not an anomaly but part of
a disturbing pattern. In a little over a year, more than 20 workers have died
in sewers and treatment tanks in New Delhi, a city of growing wealth and rising
ambition. Across India, the figures are higher; activists have documented more
than 200 such deaths since the start of 2017, a figure they say significantly
understates the problem.
The fatalities coincide with a massive effort
to improve sanitation in India. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “Clean India”
campaign includes a nationwide toilet-building drive and competitions among
cities to eliminate trash from their streets.
At the same time, little has changed for the
workers who do the hazardous and stigmatized job of dealing with human waste.
Cleaning sewers and removing blockages is still largely done by hand, despite a
2013 law prohibiting the practice. Safety equipment is mandated by law but
hardly ever used. Violators are not convicted.
The perils faced by these workers are
emblematic of a broader challenge in a country that has experienced rapid
economic growth over the past decade, lifting millions out of poverty but
exacerbating income inequality.
Sunday’s deaths occurred at DLF Capital
Greens, a gated community catering to the aspirations of India’s wealthy.
Nearby are BMW, Jaguar and Land Rover dealerships. Across the road from the
cream-colored towers are several ornate banquet halls, including one called the
“Golden Royale” featuring a glittering three-story chandelier.
Earlier this year, three people died after
inhaling poisonous gases at the sewage treatment tank of a five-star hotel in
the toniest area of New Delhi, steps from a fashionable market frequented by
foreigners. Last August, two brothers suffocated while cleaning a sewage tank
at a shopping mall in the eastern part of the city.
India’s long struggle to eradicate manual
scavenging — the practice of dealing with human waste by hand, whether in dry
latrines or in sewers — is complicated by the enduring influence of the caste
system. Such jobs are still overwhelmingly performed by Dalits, those
previously called “untouchables.”
Caste-based practices “haunt India’s efforts
to cope effectively with the waste of a vast, urbanizing population,” academics
Assa Doron and Robin Jeffrey wrote in a new book released this year. The
practices hinder cooperation and foster feelings “that removing noxious
materials is someone else’s job — even by virtue of birth.”
India has the technology to launch satellites
into space and missions to the moon, noted Bezwada Wilson, a prominent activist
who has spent years trying to eradicate manual scavenging. “But we don’t have
technology to clear the sewer lines and the septic tanks just 10 or 20 feet
down,” he said.
Wilson leads an organization called the Safai
Karamchari Andolan, or Sanitation Workers Movement. He called on Modi to
announce immediately a plan to prevent the deaths.
“Five people died, and you are not responding
even one word,” Wilson said, addressing the prime minister.
Cleaning sewers and septic tanks is usually
done by men wearing minimal clothing who enter the muck with rudimentary tools
such as metal scrapers and sticks. Some Indian cities have begun to mechanize
the process, using trucks equipped with rods and water sprayers, in
smaller-scale variations of sewer-cleaning machinery used in developed
countries. New Delhi plans to introduce 200 such trucks next month.
When human intervention is necessary, “there
should be certain trained people who do these life-threatening tasks” outfitted
with an array of protective gear, said Suresh Kumar Rohilla of the Center for
Science and Environment in New Delhi. “Everything requires cost, and people cut
corners,” he said.
Jangra said he received no training for his
job at the small sewage treatment plant, consisting of at least two tanks,
below DLF Capital Greens. Two months ago, the tanks began to stink — so much so
that one resident said he could smell them in his apartment on the 19th floor.
On Sunday afternoon, a supervisor ordered a group of young workers into the
tanks, despite their protests, to resolve an issue with the waste flow, Jangra
said. They wore no safety gear.
Jangra, 21, and his friend Pasi, 20, earned
about $165 a month. Their employer was Unnati Engineering & Contractors, a
company subcontracted to run the sewage plant. Unnati received the contract
from the Indian arm of JLL, a global real estate giant headquartered in Chicago
and formerly known as Jones Lang LaSalle. JLL, in turn, was employed to “run
the whole property for us,” said a spokesman for DLF (Delhi Land and Finance),
one of India’s largest real estate developers.
JLL issued a statement Wednesday saying it
was “shocked and deeply saddened” by the incident and was cooperating with the
relevant authorities as well as launching its own review. Unnati did not
respond to requests for comment. A supervisor employed by JLL has been
arrested, Deputy Commissioner of Police Monika Bhardwaj said, adding that more
arrests will follow.
Government officials attempted to shift blame
for the deaths. In an interview outside the building earlier this week, Adesh
Kumar Gupta, the mayor of North Delhi, said the city sewer authority and the
Delhi state government were responsible for supervising the treatment plant.
The vice chairman of the sewer authority told local media that such private
plants were outside its control.
Jangra
and Pasi lived in a broken-down neighborhood of narrow lanes in an area called
Nangloi, a world away from the elaborate gates and landscaped lawns of the
Capital Greens complex. On a recent evening, a battered tarpaulin had been
strung across the lane to shield mourners sitting on plastic chairs from the
sun and rain.
Pasi was the family’s main source of income.
His father, an electrician, had stopped working due to complications from
diabetes, while his brother Angad Pasi, 23, was pursuing a bachelor’s degree in
the hopes of landing a government job.
Angad
Pasi recalled how he and his brother dreamed of starting a business together,
one that would allow them to build a “proper” house that did not leak when it
rained. The family was desperate for help, he said, but had heard nothing from
either DLF or JLL. He covered his eyes with his hands to hide his tears.
“Five people died. This is not a small
thing,” he said. “This is not an accident. This is murder.”
Farheen Fatima contributed to this report.
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