(Un)making the manual scavenger

Abstract

AbstractIn contemporary Indian cities, sewage infrastructures hold out the promise of liberal modernity. But they have also become sites for the reinvention of “manual scavenging,” a legally abolished caste practice that degrades and kills ostracized communities by exposing them to human excreta. Amid official underreporting, activists estimate that hundreds of workers, overwhelmingly Dalit (ex‐untouchable) and hired on a contractual basis, die every year while clearing Indian sewers. Yet not a single person has been convicted of abetting manual scavenging. Cases of sewage deaths in Bengaluru, touted as India's Silicon Valley, reveal that abettors often escape prosecution, framing manual scavenging as an accidental effect of unruly sewage flows. The transformation of overburdened urban sewerage into an alibi for caste violence demonstrates how caste and contractual liberalism share a necropolitical interest in displacing ecological uncertainty onto Dalit bodies.