UNITED NATIONS (AFP) — Usha Chaumar was seven years old when she began collecting human excrement with her mother in the northern Indian state of Rajasthan.
By the age of 10 she had married and, with her mother-in-law, continued going from house to house performing this demeaning task.
“They used to call me ‘Bhangi’ (part of the lowest of Indian castes) and treat us badly,” Chaumar, now 33, told AFP in an interview here.
She was one of the country’s estimated 700,000 so-called human scavengers on the lowest rung of India’s social hierarchy, who for centuries have had the wretched task of cleaning toilets and collecting human excrement.
Many Indians today still treat the waste-collectors as “untouchables” and don’t let them approach their villages, schools or temples or come into contact with their food and drinking water.
“If I was thirsty, they would give me water but would avoid touching me,” Chaumar said.
Five years ago, her scavenging days ended when she joined the Sulabh International Social Service Organization, a non-profit group working to improve sanitation in India and the conditions for this marginalized segment of society.
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