What is manual scavenging?
Manual scavenging is the practice, still the rule in rural India, of disposing of human waste by hand, using only the most basic tools, typically a brush, a tin plate and a wicker basket carried on the head. Scavengers also dispose of dead animals. The practice was ineffectively outlawed in 1995: at least 800,000 Dalits, most of them women, still clean toilets by hand. Scavengers are at the bottom of the caste ranks, and are the lowest sub-caste among the Dalits themselves.
