Manual scavenging, according to a 2013 law, has been made illegal in India, but that has been on paper only. To this day, labourers are made to clean human faeces, an extremely dehumanizing task. The documentary Kakkoos attempts to bring more awareness, and information regarding this issue. Kakkoos is a 2017 documentary, by lawyer turned Activist Divya Bharati, who hails from Virudhunagar, Tamil Nadu. Throughout the film, she has covered around 25 districts around Tamil Nadu, interacting with manual workers and depicting images of their deplorable working conditions.  The documentary was recommended to me by my English teacher, Prof. Upmanyu Sengupta. While that was certainly one of the contributing factors to my choosing it, the main reason was the way it was shot and the raw cinematography, it makes one look at reality, breaking the façade of what society is portrayed as. Having lived in some of the cities portrayed has opened my eyes to the depth of the unfairness around me.

The documentary sheds light on various social issues surrounding manual scavenging, such as sanitation, human rights, and neglect from the authorities. Divya has conducted interviews with experts, activists, manual scavengers and their families. She has also captured footage of the situation on the ground and guides the film with her empathetic yet brutally honest commentary. 

There are various themes the documentary delves into, which we shall cover in general before looking at the aspect of caste and manual scavenging by itself. The State Government claims that cleaning sewage is now done using machines while hiding the fact that they still exploit workers to manually clean human excreta, an abomination to which even animals don’t subject fellow animals. A section of society has been assigned to this role, denying them liberty and dignity. People from Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes are targeted for this purpose. The communities of Arundhathiyar, Chakkliyar, Thotti Parayar, Adi Andhra, Mathika, Maala, Mathari from Scheduled caste and Adi Dravidar, Kaatu Naicker, Kuravar, Poyer, and Pallavar from Scheduled tribe are found in majority among manual scavengers. Most of these castes are made up of immigrants from Karnataka and Andhra, which makes them even more vulnerable, as they are discriminated for both their caste and their demographic identity.

The 2013 act mentions that 40 pieces of safety equipment must be provided to scavengers, however, most workers don’t even have access to gloves and masks and are forced to, clean human faeces, with their bare hands, being exposed to more diseases than one can count. When interviewed, workers claim that the conditions are so bad, they cannot eat or sleep at times after cleaning. The lack of proper disposal in even developed cities has caused extreme conditions for urban poor such as manual scavengers. Sometimes, these workers have to dispose of old sanitary napkins and decaying dead bodies of animals and abandoned human corpses. It is unimaginable how authorities can subject another fellow human to work such as this, the very thought of it being deeply disturbing. The cleaning of septic tanks, somehow, is worse though. It risks the very lives of workers, placing them in imminent danger. The fumes emitted are hazardous and can kill people within hours or minutes. Yet, the government recruits people to clean septic tanks, with no protection, bare-bodied, no gloves, and no masks in some instances. 

Workers are made to work in the early hours of the day and late at night, to ensure people don’t have to see the mess that irresponsible disposable of excreta and faeces causes. There is no consideration for the workers or their safety. The municipality does not meet even the basic needs of workers, providing minimum or no wages, no safety equipment, and no job security, and exploiting them to the maximum extent. Even the wages paid are a meagre Rs.5000 per month on average, which in today’s world, is barely sufficient to support a person, much less a family. This situation is only worsened by the privatization of sewage disposal. 

There was an instance mentioned in the documentary, where a female manual scavenger was hit by a bus while working at night. Atrociously, the bus was paid 1 lakh as compensation, while the woman, who sustained grave injuries, was given no compensation. This is one of the many struggles of privatization, with workers being removed from jobs suddenly, and left with no income or scope for employment. Another instance saw a man in Palani trying to burn himself alive after being fired. One may ask, why did he want to work as a manual scavenger if the situation was so bad? This was because this inhumane job was, unfortunately, the only source of income for himself and his family, as it is for many other manual scavengers. People who come from families or castes who have been manual scavengers are only offered jobs of manual scavenging and only considered worthy of it. One may ask, why do people still work as manual scavengers? Despite a 3% quota for people of these castes in the employment sector, they aren’t provided access to other jobs. When an employer sees a person from any of these castes, they only hire them for the job of cleaning latrines or sewage tanks. Kids of manual scavengers are turned away from schools and advised to take up the same profession, kids as young as 10. Even housing for these people is provided beyond the city, in the outskirts, while they strive to keep the city clean

Beyond this extreme social discrimination, the government even refuses to pay the 10-lakh compensation they must pay for the death of septic tank cleaners.  The documentary covers the death of 27 such workers. A human life can never be compensated for with money, but refusing even the little support it can provide bereaved poor families, shows how prejudiced the society and Government are. Bereaved families are still fighting legal battles for justice, with not much success. 

The Government of Tamil Nadu, while branding itself as the ambassador of change and equality, the Dravidian reformer, is very much the opposite. It portrays an image of anti-Brahminism, and of following the ideologies of social heroes such as Ambedkar and Periyar. The truth, however, could not be any farther. Anti-Brahminism does not mean equality, it simply means that the State doesn’t favour Brahmins, the so-called upper class. But it has not worked for the welfare of the oppressed. It has become the oppressor, still embroiled in the prejudiced ideas of the past. The documentary, while gaining applause from critics, has also been caught in controversy. Awareness must be spread on this highly problematic social injustice, to make a change for the better, and to provide fellow citizens with their rights.