India: Scavenging

Baroness Sheehan Excerpts

Tuesday 6th November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

I do not want to give the impression that we are passive on this. We recognise that it is outrageous that this practice still happens in a civilised country such as India. That is why we funded some of the advocacy groups that helped strengthen the manual scavenging Act. We now want to see it implemented. A range of programmes we are involved with in India covers areas such as providing better sanitation and better rights for women, children and minorities to get them the help they need—but responsibility for the implementation of that law must rest squarely with the Government of India.

[Baroness Sheehan (LD)]

My Lords, India is seventh in the world GDP ranking. It has the laws in place to tackle the loss of life in this most dehumanising of ways of making the most basic living we can imagine. In the Minister’s view, what is the reason for the lack of urgency by the Government of India in bringing an end to such a monstrous method of eking out a living?

[Lord Bates]

It is inextricably linked to the caste system, as we have said. The economy of India is one of the fastest-growing in the world and, in all likelihood, will become the third-largest economy in some 10 years. It is still presently home to one-third of the world’s poor, and 600 million people do not have access to basic sanitation.