At present, all news channels and social media are flooded with the news titled “PM washed the feet of sanitation workers at Kumbh”. This incident has been made viral by party’s well equipped IT cell that all are praising the government and PM for this work. Some are calling the government as the “Messiah of poor” and some have even termed this rule as “Ramrajya”.
I cannot understand why people are easily influenced by such tactics of politicians and forget all the misdeeds done by them? Taking advantage of this fragile nature of people, instead of development, parties resort to such illusions, drama, and tactics to lure voters. Only due to such behavior of people, parties spend maximum money on creating such “masala news”, emotional and religious traps and advertisements on social media and divert the country from important developmental issues.
Let’s ask some questions to ourselves. Will poverty and untouchability go away from lives of Dalits by washing their feet once? How does this event prove that the government has taken immense steps for Dalit welfare? How does this event even relate to the Govt’s performance? I am sure, after thinking rationally about such points, the hard work of any party creating such fancy news will be in vain.
Now, let’s look at some statistics. As per SECC 2011 data, there were about 1.8 lakh manual scavengers in the country. According to the National Commission of Safai Karmachari (NCSK), about 123 manual scavengers lost their lives while at work, since 2017. Manual scavenging is the cleaning of human waste, sewers, and tanks which is mainly done by underprivileged classes. We can read news on such deaths of people daily in India.
Untouchability and manual scavenging have been in existence since independence in India. It is shameful for the largest democracy of the world that such social evil even exists today. All governments in past have failed in eradicating this menace from the society. Politicians only praise sanitation workers in their speech and respect them to get limelight but have not done anything significant to redress their grievances.
Despite having the “prohibition of manual scavenging act 2013” in place, it is not enforced properly, and the sufferings of scavengers have not ended. They are still doing their work without any safety equipment and Indian Railways is one of the largest employers of them. Despite having “self-employment scheme for rehabilitation of manual scavengers”, we have not been able to find them dignified employment.
The truth is, if we become happy and influenced easily by such tactics of parties and vote for them, then why will governments do some meaningful development work? They only want votes, which they can get easily by advertisement, fake news, marketing, etc.
If governments had done really good work for this vulnerable section of society in the past, leaders would not have to appease them in this way. If political class were really concerned about them, manual scavenging would not have even existed in this country today. But, unfortunately, poor are always used as a political tool to appease people.
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