Untouched by Education: Casteism, untouchability and discrimination keep children of the manual scavenger community out of the classrooms

According to the 2011 census, there are 3.26 lakh Valmiki community households in Uttar Pradesh of which 2.19 lakh households are found in rural areas and the rest in urban areas. While there is no official statistics on the number of children getting an education, it is no secret that most of them drop out much before they reach middle school.

Neetu Singh
| Updated: December 31st, 2020

Jalaun (Uttar Pradesh).

Rhea’s ordeal began early, when she was only six years old. She had just been enrolled into school and there, within a few days, she had her first taste of discrimination. She can never forget how she was not allowed to sit with her classmates but instead was made to carry an empty sack from home to sit on the floor. Rhea dropped out of school within a few days and never went back. She is fourteen years old now, and still remembers how horrible it was for her. 

“I was seated away from other children. If I couldn’t form my letters, the master wouldn’t hold my hand to assist me in writing, he kept away from me too,” she recalled. Rhea lives in Sandi village of Kadaura, about 17 kms away from Jalaun district headquarters in Uttar Pradesh. She belongs to the Valmiki community, and hence considered untouchable. 

“I have four children,” Rhea’s mother told Gaon Connection. “We tried our best to educate them, but they are so discriminated against in school. We requested people to take tuitions, but no one did, since they consider us untouchable.”

Rhea Valmiki. Photo: Neetu Singh

There are five Valmiki families living in Rhea’s village and not one has a child in school who has studied beyond the eighth standard.

Due to caste-based discrimination in schools, most children of Valmiki community are reluctant to attend school. 

Like Rhea, there are about 25 children from Sandi, Maragayan and Chamari villages of Kadaura block in Jalaun district of Uttar Pradesh.  

Their families work in sanitation in the area with many of them still doing manual scavenging. While Rhea’s parents don’t, her grandmother still does manual scavenging, cleaning up human waste. 

Manual scavenging is still extant in Jalaun district. In a survey conducted in April 2018, the government had identified 649 women manual scavengers within Jalaun district. Of them, 546 received Rs 40,000 as a one time payment when they quit manual scavenging, but many others are still scavenging and have not received any benefits. Rhea’s grandmother is also one of those who have not received the livelihood compensation till date and continues to do manual scavenging.

According to Rashtriya Safai Karamchari Andolan, a movement to eliminate manual scavenging, there are still 2,059 toilets (dry latrines) in Jalaun district which require manual scavenging. Uttar Pradesh still has 5.58 lakhs such latrines.

As per 2011 census, 412 families of Valmiki community live in Jalaun district. Out of these, 301 are in rural areas and 111 live in urban areas. There are 3.26 lakh Valmiki community households in Uttar Pradesh with 2.19 lakh households in rural areas and one lakh in urban areas.

Rhea’s family does not earn much. She lives with her three siblings, her parents and her grandmother. Her father works as a utility worker in a hotel, her mother works for wages and grandmother does manual scavenging. None of Rhea’s brothers and sisters has studied beyond the fifth.

Mother and younger brother of Rhea. Photo: Neetu Singh

The state project director of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) in UP had issued a letter in November 2012 to the basic education officers of all the districts regarding “providing education to the children of manual scavengers” in which was sought the number of children (6-14 years) of manual scavengers attending as well as the number of such children having been admitted in schools. The education department was unable to provide information on the data, asked for in the letter from Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan.

“Every year, out-of-school children are identified and are enrolled in the council schools by the department. This year too, a survey was conducted and about five lakh children across the state were enrolled in the council schools,” Rohit Tripathi, senior expert (school education) of the project council of Uttar Pradesh Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan told Gaon Connection. However, he was unable to provide data on the number of children from manual scavenging families that were enrolled. “No such census or survey is conducted by the department for the category, so you will not be able to get any data on this,” he responded.

It is no secret that the Valmiki community has been discriminated against socially, economically, politically and in matters of education. “When we started working with them twenty years ago, the situation was very bad. At that time, only a handful of children were able to attend the school. Now, while the situation is better, the number of rural children attending the school is still quite dismal,” Bhaggu Lal Balmiki of Jalaun district, a member of the state-level monitoring committee for rehabilitation of manual scavengers, told Gaon Connection

Most of these children, who live in Chamari village of Jalaun district, have never went to school. Photo: Neetu Singh

“In many rural areas, the children of our caste are told to sweep at the school,” Bhaggu Lal said adding that he himself had sent three teachers to jail on 15 August 2008 for discriminating against children on grounds of untouchability. Still, in many schools, children carry their own mats and food utensils from their homes and are seated separately from other children. According to Bhaggu Lal, it was such treatment that made children drop out of school. “Because of the discrimination, the elementary education of children does not go beyond fifth and eighth, let alone higher education,” he pointed out.

“Who does not wish to be educated but people thought my presence pollutes the place, so I gave up attending school. There was not much money in the house to get me enrolled at a far-off school where no one would know my caste,” Rhea said.

“The government should ensure education from primary to higher education for the children of manual scavengers,” Bhasha Singh, a senior journalist and author of Invisible India a book on the subject of manual scavenging, told Gaon Connection. “We observe how they fail to get admission in schools. So, we are telling them that the broom is their only future. Their parents do not want them to do what they themselves have been forced to do for generations,” said Singh. The onus of ensuring education and a dignified employment  was on the government, he added. 

In a bid to leave behind the stigma, seven-year-old Anshika Valmiki of Sandi village was enrolled in a private school by her parents who could ill afford it. But the taint of untouchability followed Anshika even there. “Children remain away from me, no one plays with me readily. No one shares lunch with me. Although I feel bad, I know I must study,” said Anshika who is missing school due to the pandemic.

“You can well imagine the status of education of children whose mothers wake up in the morning and leave for work,” said Sumit Ujjainwal, who has a PhD from Delhi University on the status of Safai Karamcharis, “There is no one to help them get ready and accompany them to school. Livelihood for their mothers is more important than children’s education for they know they won’t be able to feed their children if they do not go to work. And then, our civilized society boycotts the children who somehow  manage to reach school from their slum.” 

Eight-year-old Radhika of Chamari village is in the second grade but has attended the school for only a few days. “Only if someone comes along with me to the school do I go there. I don’t go alone,” said Radhika who does not respond when asked what she has learnt at school.

“You know how much is taught in a village school. Because of untouchability, teachers do not pay attention to our children at all. We too are not educated and so we cannot teach them at home,” her mother told Gaon Connection

Prohibition of Employment of Manual Scavengers and Their Rehabilitation Act 2013, absolutely bans manual scavenging in the country. The law provides for the rehabilitation of manual scavengers. It directs the setting up of district and state level survey committees to identify those who are into manual scavenging, and provide them links to employment. Still, according to a survey in August 2019 by the National Safai Karamcharis Finance and Development Corporation (NSKFDC), an organization working under the ministry of social justice and empowerment, in the 170 districts across 18 states surveyed, 87,913 people had registered themselves as manual scavengers out of whom only 42,303 people were acknowledged by the state governments as manual scavengers. According to the survey, 41,068 people from 47 districts of Uttar Pradesh (the highest in the country), had registered themselves as manual scavengers, while the state government had accepted only 19,712 people as manual scavengers. 

“The education of these children is a very big problem at the moment,” said Magsaysay Award winner Bezwada Wilson, coordinator of the Safai Karamchari Andolan, “It is difficult as it is for them to arrange rudimentary study material, now the online classes are being held and they do not have mobile phones, laptops or computers. How will they be taught,” he asked. Wilson feared that the negligence of the government in educating the children of Dalit and safai karamcharis would make them easy prey to child labour.

Read the story in Hindi.

This is the second part of Gaon Connection’s special series — Women Gathering Human Waste in Swachh Bharat. Read the first part here.