Repulsive jobs fall to the dalits

They are the "untouchables"; the lowest of the low in India's ancient caste system. No job is too dirty or too nasty. They are the ones cleaning up the rotting corpses from the tsunamis.

Most of the 1000 or so men sweating away in the heat to clear the south Indian fishing town of Nagapattinam, which bore the brunt of the giant wave,are lower-caste dalits.

Locals, too afraid of disease and too sickened by the smell, refuse to join the grim task of digging friends and neighbours out of the debris. They just stand and watch the dalits work.

Although it has been a week since the disaster, and the destruction was confined to a tiny strip by the beach, the devastation was so great that bodies - located by the stench and the flies - are still being found.

Dalit M. Mohan and other sanitation workers from the area are working around the clock to clear Nagapattinam for an extra 50 cents a day and a meal.

The smell of death hangs heavily, mixing with the sea breeze and the almost refreshingly tart smell of the antiseptic lime powder that has turned some streets and paths white.

More than 5525 people, close to 40 per cent of India's estimated 14,488 fatalities, died along this small stretch of beach.

More than 16 per cent of India's billion plus people are dalits. Despite laws banning caste discrimination, they are abused, mistreated, even killed.

They do the jobs others won't - they clean toilets, collect garbage, skin cows. For Mohan, uneducated and low caste, the only government job open to him was as a municipal sanitation worker.

- Reuters

January 5, 2005

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