MUMBAI: Five sanitation workers, all from the lowest rung of India’s caste system, were chosen in late February to meet a very important guest: Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
As cameras flashed, Modi proceeded to wash the feet of the workers, one by one, using water and his hands, a gesture intended to honor staff who clean toilets at the Kumbh Mela, a massive religious gathering in north India.
But sanitation workers, scores of whom die each year from asphyxiation while removing waste from underground drains, have had enough, said Bezwada Wilson, the head of the Safai Karmachari Andolan (SKA), or Sanitation Workers’ Movement.
Ahead of general elections that begin on Thursday, the workers are reminding Modi of his promise to eradicate by this year the practice of manual scavenging — the cleaning, carrying or disposing of human excreta from dry latrines and sewers.
“(Modi) has done nothing for us in the past five years,” Wilson said.
India has laws banning the hiring of manual scavengers, but they have not been properly enforced, mostly due to difficulty collecting evidence and apathy by successive governments. Workers picking up human waste with bare hands is a common sight at railway stations.
While government estimates peg the number of manual scavengers at anywhere between 14,000 and 31,000, the SKA says the figure is closer to 770,000, with nearly 1,800 sewer cleaners asphyxiating to death in the last decade.
The community has little political power and Modi remains the front-runner to win the election, but critics point to their condition as another example of lofty promises undone and the empty symbolism of washing their feet.
Wilson has launched a hashtag #StopKillingUs on Twitter and demanded government help workers find jobs that give them dignity.
Most sanitation workers find it difficult to get other work because of caste-based barriers, while many operate without formal contracts and are unaware of the terms of their employment, a study by US-based advisory firm Dalberg shows.
The workers whose feet Modi washed in February are not satisfied with their jobs and want an end to manual scavenging, they told the Indian Express newspaper last month.
One said he was grateful for the honor, calling Modi a great man. But, he added: “There is no difference in our lives. We were doing this cleaning work before too, we continue to do it.”
More than 90 percent of latrine cleaners are women, and all sanitation workers are Dalits, the social group at the bottom of India’s caste system.
Workers doing India’s dirtiest job say Modi has failed them
Workers doing India’s dirtiest job say Modi has failed them
- The workers are reminding Modi of his promise to eradicate by this year the practice of manual scavenging
- Most sanitation workers find it difficult to get other work because of caste-based barriers
Only 4% women on ballot as Bangladesh prepares for post-Hasina vote
- Women PMs have ruled Bangladesh for over half of its independent history
- For 2026 vote, only 20 out of 51 political parties nominated female candidates
DHAKA: As Bangladesh prepares for the first election since the ouster of its long-serving ex-prime minister Sheikh Hasina, only 4 percent of the registered candidates are women, as more than half of the political parties did not field female candidates.
The vote on Feb. 12 will bring in new leadership after an 18-month rule of the caretaker administration that took control following the student-led uprising that ended 15 years in power of Hasina’s Awami League party.
Nearly 128 million Bangladeshis will head to the polls, but while more than 62 million of them are women, the percentage of female candidates in the race is incomparably lower, despite last year’s consensus reached by political parties to have at least 5 percent women on their lists.
According to the Election Commission, among 1,981 candidates only 81 are women, in a country that in its 54 years of independence had for 32 years been led by women prime ministers — Hasina and her late rival Khaleda Zia.
According to Dr. Rasheda Rawnak Khan from the Department of Anthropology at Dhaka University, women’s political participation was neither reflected by the rule of Hasina nor Zia.
“Bangladesh has had women rulers, not women’s rule,” Khan told Arab News. “The structure of party politics in Bangladesh is deeply patriarchal.”
Only 20 out of 51 political parties nominated female candidates for the 2026 vote. Percentage-wise, the Bangladesh Socialist Party was leading with nine women, or 34 percent of its candidates.
The election’s main contender, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, whose former leader Zia in 1991 became the second woman prime minister of a predominantly Muslim nation — after Pakistan’s Benazir Bhutto — was the party that last year put forward the 5 percent quota for women.
For the upcoming vote, however, it ended up nominating only 10 women, or 3.5 percent of its 288 candidates.
The second-largest party, Jamaat-e-Islami, has not nominated a single woman.
The 4 percent participation is lower than in the previous election in 2024, when it was slightly above 5 percent, but there was no decreasing trend. In 2019, the rate was 5.9 percent, and 4 percent in 2014.
“We have not seen any independent women’s political movement or institutional activities earlier, from where women could now participate in the election independently,” Khan said.
“Real political participation is different and difficult as well in this patriarchal society, where we need to establish internal party democracy, protection from political violence, ensure direct election, and cultural shifts around female leadership.”
While the 2024 student-led uprising featured a prominent presence of women activists, Election Commission data shows that this has not translated into their political participation, with very few women contesting the upcoming polls.
“In the student movement, women were recruited because they were useful, presentable for rallies and protests both on campus and in the field of political legitimacy. Women were kept at the forefront for exhibiting some sort of ‘inclusive’ images to the media and the people,” Khan said.
“To become a candidate in the general election, one needs to have a powerful mentor, money, muscle power, control over party people, activists, and locals. Within the male-dominated networks, it’s very difficult for women to get all these things.”
