You may have heard of scavengers that collects left over foods or garbage but in the Indian subcontinent, there is another kind of scavengers that collects human excrement for living. Yes, this is truly a very painful work. These scavengers are the “untouchables” of the Indian society. They are known as the “dalits.” Recently, UN invited 36 female scavengers from India to attend a conference in New York on the eve of the UN’s ‘International Year of Sanitation.’ The scavengers also attended a fashion show titled, ‘Mission Sanitation.’ The women walked on the ramp with famous Indian models and models from other countries. Some of the clothes the models wore were also embroidered by these women.
BBC reports:
Usha Chomar is one of these women. Walking along the corridors of the UN headquarters, she was ecstatic by the respect and honour showered on her by dignitaries and the movers and shakers of the world.
Thirty-year-old Chomar gave up scavenging in 2003. She says she finally feels like a human being. "I have always done the work of scavenging and have faced humiliation all my life.
"So I had never imagined that I would ever have been honoured like this. I am very happy at last to be treated like a normal person."
The show was very special for Usha because she was unofficially crowned as princess of sanitation workers.
In India, the scavengers are engaged into cleaning human excrement for generations. They are forced to do this demeaning work. Lack of well-developed sanitation facility in India has forced the creation of this profession. Even today, there are 340,000 scavengers in India. Currently, around 700 million Indian people living in villages do not have hygienic toilets.
In order to raise awareness among people about the need of better sanitation, UN General Assembly declared the year 2008 as the Year of Sanitation. The UN is now planning to reduce the number of people, who do not have access to basic sanitation, by half.
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