I see the same image now at a university bathroom on the corridor of the English Department, which exists to fight the very social evils that exist a few feet away from our cushioned seats of discussion. We discuss Ambedkar, and dignified labour, and then leave students to the cafeteria and teachers to their cabins in staffrooms, our break-spaces. The space the akkas receive? The bathroom floor.

Talking with a classmate who frequently interacts with the akkas, I came to know that the akkas have a designated breakroom—in the basement, far from their actual spaces of work which they need to get back to every hour. The inconvenient spacing of these break rooms, unlike the considerate accommodations students and teachers often receive, forces them to remain in the bathrooms no matter the situation. During our conversation, my classmate referred to an incident where she saw one of the akkas resting because she had a cold—by lying down on the bathroom floor.

These images, as I reflected on them, reminded me of a Dalit child made to sit on the floor while their upper-caste peers peered down at them from their benches. Space was made for individuals based on their caste. While the bathroom space of rest is not enforced the same as untouchability in schools, its logic of space has trickled down into urban institutions and spaces years after the abolition of untouchability through Article 17 in 1950.

Most of the individuals working in sanitation, and cleaning belong to the Dalit community, owing to their historic oppression and social exclusion that suppressed them into spheres of work deemed undignified or polluting for the upper class. The most adverse form of this reflected in India is manual scavenging. The workers are defined by The Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, 2013 as those “engaged or employed by an individual or a local authority or an agency or a contractor for manually cleaning, carrying, disposing off, or otherwise handling in any manner human excreta…”

Despite the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, 2013, the Safai Karamchari Andolan (SKA) estimates around 1,726 worker deaths from manual scavenging since the 2013 law. The law has not prevented the continued employment of Indian citizens in such undignified jobs based on their caste. Their systematic exclusion from higher education, and jobs beyond the brooms and mops, through threats of violence, denial and lack of pay forces them back into their caste-assigned jobs. The Safai Karamchari Andolan further estimates that among the 1.2 million sanitation workers in India, over 90% of them are Dalits.

While legally and in terms of overt oppression, workers in the housekeeping force may not be the same as manual scavengers, the occupation is a sanitised offspring of the same, which many individuals of the Dalit community are a part of owing to their historic social and economic exclusion.

The logic of a lack of spatial dignity in urban spaces for the cleaning staff contains an invisible residue of these exclusionary practices that has become normalised. This exclusion might not exist out of active caste discrimination—though it is an active practice in certain spaces. We see an institutional negligence that many spaces have arrived at that mimic the logic of a historical exclusion—here the basement and the bathroom. One must question if the normalisation of this historic exclusion has contributed to the lack of creation of dignified spaces of rest for these women. A room exists, but for whose dignity and convenience?

Now, not only has it been normalised in the minds of us privileged beneficiaries of their work, but it has also been systematically normalised in the minds of the victims through repeated practice.

A video circulating on Instagram, by the creator ‘Akash_swaroopa_,’ records him bringing in two of the housekeeping staff at a school to celebrate them. Two chairs have been set up for them at the front of the room but one of the women instinctively takes a seat on the floor before they are guided to the chairs. This instinct is a corporeal manifestation of the spatial trauma that has been ingrained into the daily lives of the workers.

These workers are often thanked and even celebrated with special days at universities and other spaces to acknowledge their work. However, that celebration of the individual becomes null and hypocritical when their work environment is undignified. No number of balloons and speeches of appreciation, while they are important, can substitute for chairs, or a convenient break room that restores dignity in everyday working conditions.

I, and others, often find ourselves touching bathroom doors with tissue paper and stepping carefully on the bathroom floor. Yet, the very spot that we are loathe to stand on is the very spot where these individuals, worthy of the break-spaces we receive, sit. It is a haunting thought to think as I sit on a cushioned chair in a Dalit Studies classroom, a few metres away from a woman who sits on the bathroom floor, just next to her disinfectants.

(The author is a Masters student of English Literature focusing on dalit studies, gender, culture and media studies based in Bangalore)

Related:

One Death Every Few Days, Zero Accountability: Sanitation workers protest at Jantar Mantar

Lucknow: Caste hierarchies & contract labour exploitation among sanitation workers

ASHA workers, Anganwadi workers and sanitation workers overlooked in India’s healthcare protection reforms

The post Sit Where We Stand: The segregated back rooms for sanitation staff in urban spaces appeared first on SabrangIndia.

A Bench comprising Justices Atul Sreedharan and Achal Sachdev allowed Chaudhary’s habeas corpus petition and held that the detention was founded on what the Court described as a “concocted story” by the State. The Court directed that she be released immediately if her custody was not required in any other case. The Court also directed the Noida authorities to pay her ₹5 lakh in compensation. The detailed order is awaited.

However, Bar & Bench has reported that Chaudhary is likely to remain in custody for the time being because she has not yet secured bail in the other criminal cases registered in connection with the Noida workers’ agitation. The judgment comes after the Bench subjected the State’s version of Chaudhary’s arrest and alleged involvement in the violence to close scrutiny, particularly the chronology of her arrest and the notices issued under the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS).

Court questions sequence of arrest and BNSS notices

During the hearing, the State told the Court that Chaudhary had been arrested at 10:56 a.m. on April 12, 2026 and that a notice under Section 130 of the BNSS had been issued to her. The State’s case was that Chaudhary had instigated protesters to engage in stone-pelting and arson. The Bench, however, questioned whether the procedure prescribed under the BNSS had actually been followed.

Justice Sreedharan specifically asked whether Chaudhary had first been served a notice under Section 126. The State acknowledged that no such notice had been issued and that the notice under Section 130 had instead been served. The Court then examined the chronology of the documents and the General Diary (GD) entry. Justice Sreedharan questioned how a notice could have been prepared after Chaudhary had already been arrested.

As reported by LiveLaw, the Court observed in court: “Ab ismei GD entry dekhiye, usko arrest karliya fir notice banaya.”

The Bench further pointed to the apparent inconsistency between the arrest record and the notice, observing that the record indicated that Chaudhary had already been arrested before the notice was prepared. The Court’s questioning went to the heart of the legality of the detention: whether the State had followed the statutory sequence required before taking the drastic step of arrest and subsequently placing Chaudhary under preventive detention.

‘Whatever violence has happened is after her arrest’

The Court also closely examined the State’s claim that Chaudhary had played a role in instigating the violence during the workers’ protest. The State relied on the events surrounding the workers’ mobilisation and alleged that Chaudhary had encouraged protesters to resort to violence, including stone-pelting and arson. But the Bench drew attention to the chronology of events.

According to the State’s own account, people had gathered for the protest on April 11. Justice Sreedharan pointed out that the significant violence relied upon by the prosecution occurred only later.

“Yani 11 ko koi violence nahi tha. Whatever violence has happened is after her arrest,” the Court observed, according to LiveLaw.

The observation was significant because the State’s case depended on establishing Chaudhary’s connection to the violence. If she had already been arrested before the violence that formed the basis of the allegations, the Court was evidently questioning how the State could attribute subsequent acts of violence to her.

Where is the video evidence?

The Bench had already expressed concern about the evidentiary basis of the State’s allegations during the previous hearing. On September 1, the Court had specifically asked the Uttar Pradesh government to produce video footage showing Chaudhary allegedly instigating protesters to throw stones or set vehicles on fire. The State sought additional time to obtain and produce the footage. The Court refused.

Justice Sreedharan noted that Chaudhary had already spent approximately five months in custody and said, “I won’t give time. She has been in jail for 5 months.”

The Bench had also warned that if the record ultimately showed an arbitrary exercise of power, costs could be imposed on the officials concerned. The issue resurfaced during the final hearing when the State relied upon witness statements that allegedly named Chaudhary. The Bench, however, sought something more specific: where was the material showing that she had actually instigated the violence?

The Court also questioned the State’s reliance on the chargesheet, asking where the witnesses had specifically implicated her and where the videographic evidence demonstrated the alleged acts of instigation.

From workers’ protest to NSA detention

Chaudhary’s detention stems from the Noida workers’ protests of April 2026, which began over demands for higher wages and improved working conditions and later escalated into violence, arson and clashes with the police. The protests began peacefully but turned violent on April 13. Police subsequently arrested a large number of workers and activists and registered multiple criminal cases.

Chaudhary, a Delhi University history graduate and activist, was among those arrested. The Uttar Pradesh government subsequently invoked the NSA against her and journalist and activist Satyam Verma on May 13. The police alleged that the two had played a significant role in the violence and disruption associated with the workers’ agitation.

At the time, Gautam Buddh Nagar Police Commissioner Laxmi Singh claimed that the police had “strong electronic and videographic evidence” against Chaudhary, Verma and others arrested in connection with the protests. The police’s version was that the violence was not spontaneous but part of a wider organised effort.

Detailed report may be read here and here.

Related:

Noida Protest 2026: A labour uprising the state refused to understand

No ‘Pakistan conspiracy’ in Noida labour unrest: Fact-finding report

NSA slapped on journalist, DU scholar in Noida workers’ protest case amid allegations of crackdown on dissent

The post Allahabad HC quashes NSA detention of Aakriti Chaudhary, questions ‘concocted’ State narrative in Noida workers’ protest case appeared first on SabrangIndia.

According to the data compiled by the Safai Karamchari Andolan, a civil society organisation working against Manual Scavenging – 101 sanitation workers have died cleaning sewers and septic tanks across India during the first 188 days of 2026, amounting to one death every 45 hours. The capital of India, Delhi NCR is alone accounted for 12 deaths. However, what constitutes a greater violation of human rights is the under-reporting of these deaths by the central government in order to evade liability. In an April 2026 through a release of the Press Information Bureau (PIB), the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment stated that, according to the National Commission for Safai Karamcharis, 317 sanitation workers had died due to hazardous cleaning of sewers and septic tanks between 2021 and 2025, the same release says that 89,248 sewer/septic tank workers had been profiled and validated under NAMASTE scheme. The State’s own numbers reveal a troubling contradiction: thousands of workers are recognised as performing hazardous sanitation work, yet the deaths arising from it remain strikingly few on paper. How, then, are these deaths being counted?

The state justifies this under-reporting by drawing a distinction between “cleaning human excreta” vs “accidents during the hazardous cleaning of sewers and septic tanks”, but for the worker who enters a sewer and never comes out, there is no such distinction. The major question that we as a society should ask is that when a person dies while manually cleaning a sewer, does the legal classification matter more than the death?

If carefully scrutinised, we can find that the section 2(d) of the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers Act, 2013 separately defines “hazardous cleaning”, whereas section 7 expressly prohibits employing or engaging a person for hazardous cleaning of a sewer or septic tank, and under Sec 33, the act doesn’t merely prohibit hazardous cleaning, it also says that local authorities and other agencies have a duty to use modern technology for cleaning sewers and septic tanks. The emphasis, therefore, should not merely be on providing protective gear to those entering these hazardous spaces, but on completely eliminating the need for human beings to enter them in the first place. Yet, despite the legislative mandate and technological alternatives, State instrumentalities continue to remain criminally silent.

In the case of Safai Karamchari Andolan & Ors. v. Union of India (2014), the Court recognised sewer deaths and directed compensation of Rs. 10 lakhs to the families of deceased workers, which was enhanced to Rs. 30 lakhs in Balram Singh v. Union of India (2023)

The documentary Kakkoos filmed in Tamil Nadu, a state which is said to have the highest number of Manual Scavengers, brings out another disturbing reality: the existence of legislation prohibiting dry latrines has not eliminated the conditions that continue to force people to manually handle human excreta. However, the practice extends far beyond the cleaning of latrines.

Garbage collectors, for instance, are often required to handle human excreta when waste from households of medical patients is disposed of in polythene bags and subsequently has to be removed by hand. In schools without adequate water or sanitation facilities, children may defecate and leave, leaving cleaners to remove the excreta with their bare hands. Yet, such workers are often not recognised as manual scavengers. Kakkoos therefore exposes the gap between the legal understanding of manual scavenging and the lived reality of those who, in one way or another, are compelled to handle human excreta.

However, the danger does not end with the indignity of the work. Manual scavengers are routinely exposed to hazardous gases such as hydrogen sulphide, carbon monoxide, ammonia and methane, with prolonged exposure causing respiratory and visual impairment, seizures and, in severe cases, death. Constant contact with human and animal excreta further exposes them to infections such as leptospirosis. Yet, for a community already pushed to the margins by caste and poverty, access to healthcare remains limited. The physical and mental toll of such work, coupled with poor living conditions and, in some cases, dependence on alcohol as a means of coping, only deepens a cycle of vulnerability that the State has a responsibility to break.

Manual scavenging, thus, is not only a blatant violation of the human rights bestowed upon an individual by virtue of birth, but also raises serious questions about social practices continued in society in the name of “tradition”. The practice is deeply rooted in the caste hierarchy, where a birth-given identity has historically determined the occupation and social position of an individual.

Yet, despite Article 17 of the Constitution abolishing untouchability in 1949, manual scavengers continue to remain among the most disadvantaged communities within the Dalit population, historically placed at the lowest rungs of the caste hierarchy as “Atishudras”. The fact that a birth-assigned tag can continue to determine who performs such inhumane work, decades after constitutional abolition, is perhaps the starkest illustration of the distance between what the law promises and what society continues to practice.

(The author is a law student at BMS College of Law, Bangalore)

Related:

#STOPKILLINGUS Protest at Jantar Mantar on August 4 against GOI’s “cover-up” of Manual Scavenging deaths

Manual scavenger deaths: How effective is the law in preventing them?

Supreme Court bans manual scavenging in metro cities

Manual scavenger deaths: How effective is the law in preventing them?

The post The Deaths behind India’s Cleanliness appeared first on SabrangIndia.

On August 4, hundreds of safai karmacharis (sanitation workers), families of those who died cleaning sewers and septic tanks, Members of Parliament, students, writers and civil society groups assembled at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi under the banner of the Safai Karmachari Andolan (SKA). Their demand was strikingly simple: that Prime Minister Narendra Modi publicly acknowledge the government’s failure to stop these deaths, apologise to the country, and end what they described as a continuing cycle of preventable killings.

The demonstration, organised under the slogan #STOPKILLINGUS, was not merely another protest against unsafe labour conditions. It was an indictment of a system that activists argue has normalised caste-based hazardous labour while simultaneously understating its human cost. As reported by Newsreel Asia, Protesters carried placards reading “Stop Killing Us! Stop Hiding Our Deaths!” and “PM Break Your Silence!” while submitting a memorandum accusing the Union government of concealing the true scale of sewer and septic tank deaths.

The missing dead

At the centre of the protest lies a stark dispute over numbers. According to documentation compiled by the Safai Karmachari Andolan, 593 people died while cleaning sewers and septic tanks between January 2021 and July 2026. However, the Union government’s response in Parliament acknowledged only 332 deaths during roughly the same period. That leaves 261 deaths unaccounted for, according to SKA.

The memorandum submitted to the Prime Minister posed a direct question:

“How did 593 deaths become 332? Where have you hidden the remaining 261 persons who were killed?”

According to the organisation’s records:

• 2021: 47 deaths
• 2022: 93 deaths
• 2023: 102 deaths
• 2024: 117 deaths
• 2025: 121 deaths
• January–July 2026: 113 deaths, including 15 in July alone

The trend demonstrates not improvement but escalation. SKA National Convenor Bezwada Wilson said that despite more than four decades of campaigning against manual scavenging, sanitation workers continue to be sent into sewers and septic tanks in violation of law, reported Newsreel Asia.

“If the government does not immediately stop these killings,” he warned, “the community will have no option but to organise a nationwide chakka jam.”

Not accidents, but illegal deaths

The language used by the movement is deliberate. The memorandum repeatedly rejects the official description of these incidents as workplace accidents. “These deaths are not accidents. They are caused by illegally employing and forcing workers to get inside septic tanks and underground sewer drains.”

The organisation argues that every such death violates Articles 14, 17 and 21 of the Constitution—equality before law, abolition of untouchability and the right to life. SKA National Leader Deepthi Sukumar argued that the persistence of these deaths reflects not only administrative negligence but the continuing reality of caste discrimination. “Because those dying are Dalits, the government does not seem to care,” she said, reported The Hindustan Gazette.

Rajya Sabha MP Manoj Kumar Jha described the deaths as “a matter of national shame“, while CPI(ML) MP Sudhama Prasad criticised the Modi government’s “Manuvadi mindset,” accused the government of attempting to hide fatalities instead of preventing them, reported The Hindustan Gazette. Congress MP Karamveer Baudh assured protesters that the issue would be raised in Parliament.

The human cost behind the statistics

Behind every disputed statistic is a family still waiting for accountability. Forty-two-year-old Satyawati travelled to Jantar Mantar carrying memories dating back to March 20, 2009. Her brother-in-law, Ashok Kumar, worked for the Municipal Corporation of Delhi collecting garbage. “He left home for work but never returned,” she recalled, reported Hindustan Times.

According to Satyawati, the family later received a phone call informing them that Ashok had been sent to clean a septic tank in Delhi’s Narela and died inside it. Seventeen years later, she says, nothing has changed. Her family’s story mirrors hundreds of others represented at the protest—families for whom compensation has often remained inadequate, prosecutions rare, and justice elusive.

The report by Hindustan Times also shared the story of another participant, Paleram, a 60-year-old daily wage worker from Rohini who migrated from Haryana, described entering septic tanks for nearly twenty-five years with almost no training or protective equipment. He began as a sweeper earning ₹50 a day before switching to septic tank cleaning because it paid marginally more.

“The only training I received was being told to climb down the slippery iron handles and clean,” he said, reported Hindustan Times. After recently fracturing his leg while slipping inside a septic tank, he continues working because there are few alternatives. “Sometimes NGOs give us gloves. Otherwise we go inside wearing almost nothing.”

These accounts expose the gap between official claims of mechanisation and the everyday realities faced by sanitation workers.

The caste system beneath the sewer

The protest repeatedly foregrounded what scholars and activists have argued for decades: manual scavenging is not merely an occupational hazard but a caste-based institution. A doctoral researcher studying caste and occupation at Ambedkar University observed that while governments celebrate cleanliness campaigns, the workers responsible for maintaining sanitation infrastructure remain among the least protected.

CPI(M) leader Brinda Karat, who joined the demonstration, remarked that sanitation workers remain invisible both in life and in death. “They are invisible when they are alive, and when they die, the government behaves as though they never existed,” reported Hindustan Times.

Manoj Kumar Jha similarly argued that the overwhelming concentration of Dalits in sanitation work reflects centuries of structural exclusion rather than individual occupational choice.

NAMASTE and the mechanisation gap

India has formally attempted to abolish manual scavenging for decades. The first national legislation prohibiting manual scavenging came in 1993. It was replaced by the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, 2013, which criminalised the employment of manual scavengers, prohibited hazardous cleaning of sewers and septic tanks without adequate safeguards, and promised rehabilitation. Yet enforcement has remained weak.

No meaningful record of widespread prosecutions exists under the earlier legislation. The 2013 law itself has been criticised for leaving significant ambiguities, including failing to clearly define what constitutes adequate protective equipment and allowing hazardous sewer work under certain conditions. Government data has also remained contested.

The 2011 Census recorded more than 2.6 million dry latrines, while the Socio-Economic Caste Census identified over 180,000 households dependent on manual scavenging as a livelihood. The Safai Karmachari Andolan has consistently argued that the real number of manual scavengers exceeds one million. They have also repeatedly identified the Indian Railways as one of the country’s largest employers of sanitation workers engaged in manual cleaning through contractual arrangements.

Detailed report on how employement of sanitary workers in Indian Railway tracks is a problem may be read here.

In July 2023, the Union government launched the National Action for Mechanised Sanitation Ecosystem (NAMASTE), promising to eliminate hazardous manual sewer cleaning through mechanisation. According to government announcements, the programme was allocated ₹349.73 crore. Three years later, SKA argues that sanitation work remains overwhelmingly dependent on human entry into septic tanks and sewers. The organisation therefore describes the scheme as having failed to achieve its primary objective. Its memorandum asks the government to officially acknowledge this failure and fundamentally redesign the programme.

The Supreme Court’s growing frustration

On July 27, the Supreme Court sharply criticised state governments for failing to prevent sewer deaths despite repeated judicial directions. Hearing the long-pending public interest litigation filed by Dr Balram concerning manual scavenging and sewer cleaning, a Bench comprising Justices Aravind Kumar and Vipul M. Pancholi expressed serious concern over continuing fatalities.

Senior Advocate K. Parameshwar, appearing as amicus curiae, informed the Court that deaths had continued despite its landmark 2023 judgment and subsequent monitoring orders. Referring to data placed before Parliament, he submitted that 54 sewer deaths were officially recorded in 2024 and 46 deaths in 2025, with Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh among the affected states.

Detailed reports on the judgments may be read here, here and here.

The Court responded by issuing show-cause notices to the Chief Secretaries of five states, asking why contempt proceedings should not be initiated for failing to comply with its earlier directions.

As reported by LiveLaw, Justice Aravind Kumar made the Court’s frustration unmistakably clear: “If deaths have occurred subsequent to our orders, we are going to summon your Chief Secretaries… We are making it very clear that we are going to initiate suo motu contempt… This can’t go on… We will fix the responsibility. Somewhere it has to stop.”

The Bench noted that despite repeated directions issued since October 2023, including enhanced compensation of ₹30 lakh for sewer deaths and the January 2025 ban on manual sewer cleaning in six metropolitan cities, fatalities continued “in larger numbers”, indicating that the Court’s orders had failed to translate into administrative action.

A detailed look into the jurisprudence governing manual scavenging, researched consistently by Citizens for Justice and Peace, can be accessed here.

A demand for political accountability

The memorandum submitted by SKA asks for more than compensation. It demands:

• A national apology from the Prime Minister.
• Disclosure of the actual number of sewer and septic tank deaths.
• Immediate elimination of manual entry into sewers.
• A Parliamentary Standing Committee to investigate continuing fatalities.
• A time-bound national plan to eliminate sewer and septic tank deaths.

The memorandum also notes that similar representations were submitted to the Prime Minister’s Office in March 2025 and March 2026, yet received no response.

The memorandum to the PM is attached below:

An old practice the law still has not ended

The protest at Jantar Mantar exposed more than the continuing existence of manual scavenging. It highlighted the widening gap between constitutional guarantees, legislative promises, judicial directives and everyday governance.

Every sewer death occurring after the 2013 Act, after the launch of the NAMASTE Scheme, and after repeated Supreme Court orders raises difficult questions about implementation rather than legislative intent. When governments continue to describe these fatalities as isolated workplace accidents while workers are illegally sent into toxic pits without adequate protection, accountability shifts from individual contractors to the institutions responsible for regulation and enforcement.

For families like Satyawati’s, whose wait for justice has stretched across seventeen years, the demand is no longer simply for compensation. It is for official acknowledgement that these deaths are neither inevitable nor accidental, but the foreseeable consequence of a system that continues to rely on caste-based labour despite laws enacted to abolish it. Until that acknowledgement is matched by enforcement, mechanisation and prosecution, every new sewer death will remain not only a labour rights failure but also a constitutional one.

Related:

Supreme Court bans manual scavenging in metro cities

Breaking the cruel cycle of oppression: one more judgment against manual scavenging in India

SC asks Union, state to eradicate manual scavenging completely, ensure compensation, rehabilitation and education

Manual Scavenging: Why the gov’t’s conscience is not clean about the Swachh Bharat Mission

Caste-based prison work is authoritarian, colonial said SC striking down discriminatory State Prison Manuals

Manual scavenger deaths: How effective is the law in preventing them?

Everyday Atrocity: Mapping the normalisation of violence against Dalits and Adivasis in 2025

The post One Death Every Few Days, Zero Accountability: Sanitation workers protest at Jantar Mantar appeared first on SabrangIndia.

In a press release issued today, August 3, the SKA has raised the following key issues:

A staggering 593 persons have been killed in sewer and septic tanks, from January 2021 to date (July 2026) but Government has reported only 332 such deaths to the parliament. The SKA has demanded to know

• Why the remaining 261 deaths are being concealed.
• SKA data shows 47 deaths in 2021, 93 in 2022, 102 in 2023, 117 in 2024 and 121 sewer and septic tank deaths in 2025.
• This year alone, 2026, in just 7 months from January to July 2026, 113 persons have been killed in sewer and septic tanks all over the country.
• In the month of July 2026 itself, 15 persons were killed.

Strongly criticising the dismissive and arrogant attitude of the government that, the SKA alleges is “concealing figures”, the SKA also states that this attitude extends to labelling these figures of lives lost as “mere workplace accidents.” Instead of taking policy decisions outlines clearly in the 2013 law to abolish the abhorrent practice, the SKA states that “the government is only focussed on obscuring the truth.”

Hence, women, youth, workers engaged in cleaning sewer and septic tanks and families of those who were killed, will gather at Jantar Mantar on August 4, 2026 at 3 p.m. to demand that the Prime Minister should accept full responsibility for “these deaths and to constitute a Parliamentary Standing Committee inquiry into these killings. Government should present a timebound national plan for the immediate stop to sewer and septic tank deaths.”

Read Citizens for Justice   & Peace’s legal primer on the laws periodically passed to abolish this abhorrent practice –that remain grossly unimplemented—here and here. More on the efficacy of a law to ban a practice where, tragically, local government bodies remain the main practioneers/ offencers may be read here.

The post #STOPKILLINGUS Protest at Jantar Mantar on August 4 against GOI’s “cover-up” of Manual Scavenging deaths appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Background of the case and procedural history

 The appellants, Mayadhar Nayak and Baina Nayak, were daily wagers belonging to the Scheduled Castes, who served the Government Treasury Branch of SBI in Bhubaneswar as cleaners and sweepers for approximately three decades, starting in 1994 and 1995, respectively.

The appellants had previously approached the Court in 1999 regarding non-regularisation of service and denial of pay on par with temporary employees. This produced an interim protective order on October 28, 1999 where the Court said, “If there is work for the Petitioners, they may not be retrenched.” The Court had directed the Bank to pay them remuneration under the Minimum Wages Act and be allowed to continue working as long as work was available, without being substituted by new hands. The Court also asked the bank to consider their cases for regularisation if any vacancies arose.

In 2007, the appellants again approached the Court claiming that the Bank was seeking to fill up the posts of Sweepers and other menial staff without considering their claim for appointment. This time too, the Court asked the bank to consider their cases for regularisation if any vacancies arose, keeping in view the length of their engagement and the services.

In terms of the above order, Appellants were paid on September 17, 2021 the arrears of minimum wages quantified at Rs.1, 61,619/- , each, for the period between April, 2017 & June, 2021.

Around five years later, in 2012, the appellants filed another petition for their recognition as temporary employees, pay parity under the principle of ‘equal pay for equal work’, release of bonus for the financial year 2011–12, and extension of all temporary service benefits as granted to similarly situated employees of the Bank.

In 2020, the appellants another petition seeking regularisation of their services, contending that the Bank had regularised the services of a similarly situated employee engaged as a ‘Liftman’ at the time, the appellants were receiving a consolidated monthly remuneration of Rs.16,406/- while other temporary employees of the Bank were receiving Rs.27,443/-.

On June 20 2025, a single judge bench Justice S.K. Panigrahi which was hearing both the petitions together dismissed the appellants’ writ petitions finding all their claims unsustainable. The judgment read:

“While this Court does not disregard the long and uninterrupted service rendered by the petitioners, it is well-settled that mere length of service does not by itself confer a right to regularisation. The consistent position in law is that engagement on a daily wage or casual basis, however prolonged, cannot mature into a claim for regular appointment in the absence of sanctioned posts and adherence to a lawful selection process.” (Para 18).

In 2022, the Bank had sought permission to retrench the Appellants as being surplus workers.

On July 19, 2025, the appellants were retrenched by the bank as surplus workers under Section 25F of Industrial Disputes Act, 1947 and were paid roughly Rs. 3.31 lakh each as statutory compensation and payment due to a policy shift toward outsourcing driven by IT developments in banking.

The division bench presently hearing the case, had to decide whether

• the appellants, after nearly 30 years of service were entitled to regularisation and consequential monetary benefits,
• the previous court orders, which only directed the payment of minimum wages and conditional consideration for vacancies, barred the appellants’ current claims for regularisation, and
• what constitutes fair ‘remediable and reparative justice’ for manual labourers in an era of outsourcing and AI, when regularisation might impose an excessive financial burden on the employer.

High Court’s intervention

 The Division Bench partially allowed the appeals and set aside the order of the Single Judge through an order on May 18, 2026. In that it said:

“There appears to be a prima facie case for granting relief to the Appellants herein, who admittedly have put in service as Sweepers, first Appellant from 1994, and the second from 1995. The law, as it now stands in the June of its life, tilts in favour of the Appellant’s herein, inasmuch as, arguably, the impugned order of the learned Single Judge has missed the march”

• Declined Regularisation

The Court declined to order regularisation. Reliance was placed on Supreme Court’s rulings in Jaggo v. Union of India (2024), and Shripal v. Nagar Nigam (2025) but the Court noted it would cause the Bank to bear the brunt of losing huge money and that the appellants’ prior cases only resulted in a direction for minimum wages. At the same time, the Court observed that the appellants’ earlier rounds of litigation had not secured them much real benefit, since those orders only directed payment of minimum wages, which SBI had already paid. Because of this, the Bench held that the regularisation claim in the present appeals was, to an extent, barred by the principle of res judicata.

The Court then referred to a coordinate Bench’s order in Secretary, Berhampur Cooperative Central Bank Ltd. v. Bhaba Sundar Dalai (2026), where Rs 10 lakh had been awarded as compensation in lieu of regularisation. However, the Bench distinguished that case as there was no res judicata bar in it, and the employees’ service was comparatively shorter.

The Court took note of two mitigating factors specific to the present appellants, that they had roughly ten years left before superannuation, and that both belonged to Scheduled Castes, as relevant considerations in shaping the final relief.

• Justification for the Compensation Amount

In the May order, the Court had suggested both the sides to negotiate a settlement with fairness and justice. The SBI proposed to pay a lump sum compensation of Rs. 5 lakh to each of the appellants to settle the dispute. However, the appellants rejected the bank’s offer and during a personal interaction with the Court, they stated they would settle for Rs. 25 lakh each

The Court evaluated both proposals and described the Bank’s Rs. 5 lakh offer inadequate. It said:

“Rupees 5 lakh offer made by the Bank as compensation is too frugal to be mentioned, when bread is costlier than blood, Rupee value now-a-days dwindling down. The Appellants, who have given their sweat & blood, cannot seek gainful employment elsewhere at their present declining age. They were working only as sweepers with not much education nor with due social status.” (Para 7.3.2)

Instead, the Court awarded a lump sum compensation of Rs. 20, 00,000 (Twenty Lakh) to each appellant in lieu of regularisation and continued service.

While deciding the compensation amount, it remarked:

“In the AI era, we are not sure that they would be able to eke out their livelihood, having spent prime of their life blood in the menial job all these years. Even Rs.10 lakh compensation awarded by the Coordinate Bench to the workmen of a Cooperative Bank would not constitute a solid yardstick for determining what should be paid to these poor persons. Should Appellants be regularized in service, it would incur more expenditure than otherwise.” (Para 7.3.2)

The Bank was ordered to pay the total Rs. 40 lakh within eight weeks. Any delay would trigger an interest penalty (1% for the first month and 2% thereafter), which the Court directed should be recovered personally from the erring bank officials.

The full judgment may be read here:

Why Regularisation Never Came

 The Fifth Schedule to the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947, that designates certain practices as unfair labour practices includes:

 “10. To employ workmen as “badlis”, casuals or temporaries and to continue them as such for years, with the object of depriving them of the status and privileges of permanent workmen.”

 For thirty years, and over 240 days annually, the appellants discharged their duty in continuity. For context, the Government Treasury Branch of the Bank occupies more than 11,000 square feet, spread over three levels comprising the upper basement, ground floor, and first floor. The premises include eight toilets and six urinals. The Appellants had been performing cleaning duties in the said premises along with outsourced employees.

The denial of regularisation and long-term benefits to contractual or temporary workers is a heavily litigated issue in India, and not unique to the present case. In Secretary, State of Karnataka v. Umadevi (2006) the Court clarified that temporary, daily wage, or contractual employees do not possess a legal or fundamental right to be made permanent. It held that a court cannot issue a writ of mandamus to make a worker permanent because the worker has no enforceable legal right to such a status, and the State has no legal duty to provide it outside of established rules. However, the Court also provided a narrow exception as a one-time measure for workers who have completed at least 10 years of service. Regularisation, it held, may be permitted where the appointment was irregular (meaning it suffered from a procedural flaw) but not illegal.

In Jaggo v. Union of India (2024), the Supreme Court said that the appellants’ long and uninterrupted service, for periods extending well beyond ten years, cannot be brushed aside merely by labelling their initial appointments as part-time or contractual. The essence of their employment must be considered in the light of their sustained contribution, the integral nature of their work, and the fact that no evidence suggests their entry was through any illegal or surreptitious route. The judgment read:

“The claim by the respondents that these were not regular posts lacks merit, as the nature of the work performed by the appellants was perennial and fundamental to the functioning of the offices. The recurring nature of these duties necessitates their classification as regular posts, irrespective of how their initial engagements were labelled. It is also noteworthy that subsequent outsourcing of these same tasks to private agencies after the appellants’ termination demonstrates the inherent need for these services. This act of outsourcing, which effectively replaced one set of workers with another, further underscores that the work in question was neither temporary nor occasional.” (Para 13)

In Mahanadi Coalfields Ltd. vs Brajrajnagar Coal Mines Workers Union (2024), the Court held that workers engaged to perform work of regular and perennial nature cannot be treated as contract labour.

Similarly, last year, in Shripal vs Nagar Nigam (2025), the Supreme Court while acknowledging the precedence in Umadevi, emphasised that workers performing duties that are integral, ongoing, and perennial to an institution’s functions should not be relegated to perpetual daily-wage status. The judgment authored by Justice Vikram Nath said:

“While the judgment in Uma Devi (supra) sought to curtail the practice of backdoor entries and ensure appointments adhered to constitutional principles, it is regrettable that its principles are often misinterpreted or misapplied to deny legitimate claims of long-serving employees. This judgment aimed to distinguish between “illegal” and “irregular” appointments. It categorically held that employees in irregular appointments, who were engaged in duly sanctioned posts and had served continuously for more than ten years, should be considered for regularization as a one-time measure. However, the laudable intent of the judgment is being subverted when institutions rely on its dicta to indiscriminately reject the claims of employees, even in cases where their appointments are not illegal, but merely lack adherence to procedural formalities.” (Para 26).

“Indian labour law strongly disfavours perpetual daily-wage or contractual engagements in circumstances where the work is permanent in nature. Morally and legally, workers who fulfil ongoing municipal requirements year after year cannot be dismissed summarily as dispensable, particularly in the absence of a genuine contractor agreement.” (Para 15).

To continue extracting regular labour for decades while pleading a lack of sanctioned strength is a position the Court found legally and morally unsustainable in Dharam Singh vs State of UP (2025).

In January this year, in Bhola Nath vs The State Of Jharkhand (2026), the Court while finding the State’s refusal to regularise the workers who had served for over a decade to be a clear derogation of equality principles, directed the State to forthwith regularise the appellants against the sanctioned posts they were initially appointed to, granting them all consequential service benefits

Hence, while long service alone does not guarantee automatic regularisation, the Supreme Court has ruled that continuing workers in identical, perpetual roles on temporary wages while denying them benefits can be considered arbitrary and discriminatory.

During the litigation, the appellants in present case- Mayadhar Nayak supported his wife, two children, and a father aged about 80 years. On the other hand, Baina Nayak was the sole caretaker of a mentally and physically disabled child and another son, all of whom dependent on his meagre income of about Rs 16,000.

On paper, the Nayaks had reason to expect a better outcome. They approached the High Court as early as 1999 where a coordinate bench even secured them protection against retrenchment in 1999, and in 2007 the Court directed SBI to consider them if sweeper vacancies were filled. Yet each of these interventions never fruitioned into regularisation.

When two vacancies did arise after the 2007/2008 orders, SBI chose to outsource the cleaning function rather than fill the posts departmentally citing a policy shift attributed to changes in banking operations. Because this outsourcing decision was never independently challenged, it stood, and it extinguished the very condition on which the appellants’ continued engagement depended. Rather than terminating long-serving casual workers outright, the restructuring of the underlying work itself dissolved the employee’s along with the post. By the time the Division Bench heard the 2025 appeals, it held that the earlier 2007/2008 orders had already adjudicated.

Compensation and Delayed Justice

 Regularisation would have given the appellants a pension, medical benefits, promotional prospects, and crucially continued income until superannuation. A one-time payment, however large, is a terminal substitute.

 None of this is to say compensation is worthless. Rs20 lakh each is a materially significant, life-altering sum, and the Court’s insistence on interest for delay and personal liability of erring officials for that interest is a genuinely useful enforcement mechanism. But as a systemic remedy for decades of institutionalised casualisation, compensation calculated case-by-case, in peculiar facts and circumstances, explicitly disclaiming precedential value, plausibly should not substitute for either a binding regularisation scheme or statutory reform that removes employers’ incentive to keep essential, perennial work permanently temporary! While salary or lump-sum compensation prevents destitution, it does not cure systemic exploitation. Compensation is at best a consolation, and workers deserve justice, not just money. Compensation does little to restore lost career opportunities, dignity and security.

 “The Appellants have been fighting the legal battles since about three decades, complete justice eluding for one or the other reason,” acknowledged the Orissa High Court in the present case.

This is not unusual. Delay is a common feature of our judicial system. Labour disputes in India typically take somewhere between seven to ten years to reach a final judgment. Pendency of labour disputes in general for long period of time leads to frustration among workers.

The Delhi High Court recently flagged this delay directly, describing the backlog of pending labour matters before constitutional courts as a “sorry state of affairs” in the constitutional courts where the “poor labourers are forced to fight tooth and nail to get justice for themselves”. Reported the Indian Express.

Labour Law in the AI-era

 Tucked into the judgment’s compensation calculus, the Bench doubted the appellants could “eke out their livelihood… in the AI era,” having spent their working lives in menial labour with little education. This, on one level, was an acknowledgment that older, low-skilled workers pushed out of long-term employment have genuinely diminished prospects of re-entering the labour market. But it is worth reading as part of a broader, nascent judicial awareness that automation and technological change will compound the harm of insecure employment for low-skill, manual roles.

A public employer that outsources or automates a function bears a one-time restructuring cost but the displaced worker bears a lifetime cost, often without the education or capital to pivot into new work. The Court’s remark implicitly recognises this asymmetry, even if it does not translate it into a legal standard.

“Perennial nature of work” as a legal test may itself be eroding. Much of the jurisprudence on regularisation and contract labour assumes that if work is genuinely permanent, it should attract permanent labour protections. But work that was perennial for thirty years can be redefined as time-limited or eliminable through outsourcing plus technology, without ever being tested against the perennial nature standard in a contested proceeding.

Indian courts have long tied the right to livelihood, and by extension dignity, to Article 21. It would perhaps be an overreach to describe this as an emerging AI-era jurisprudence. But future litigants representing displaced casual workers in automating sectors like banking, toll collection, municipal sanitation may well cite this observation as an early judicial acknowledgment that technological displacement deserves distinct legal weight. The judges however have made it clear that this order is based on the facts of this case and they do not intend to make it a binding precedent or a Rule of Parity.

(The legal research team of CJP consists of lawyers and interns; this judgement primer has been worked on by Tanishka Shah)

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Lucknow: Caste hierarchies & contract labour exploitation among sanitation workers

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Despite a sewer, death happening every 45 hours in the country, shameless governments have chosen to remain in criminal silence. Needless to say, Dalit lives don’t matter for government and they have been turned into a new normal. How widespread this practice is can be understood by this simple fact that this year sewer and septic tank deaths have been reported from 16 states across the. Increase in number of deaths in sewers and septic tanks have been alarming over the last decade. While in 2016 only 39 deaths were reported, this figure jumped by 350% next year in 2017 to a staggering 137 deaths.

After various Supreme Court Judgments and the subsequent passage of the ‘Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act’, 2013, one would have expected the governments to be proactive. However, SKA has documented 1726 deaths since the new act came into force. Among them 1203 deaths came just from seven states—Tamil Nadu (332), Gujarat (216), Delhi-NCR (157), Maharashtra (155), Uttar Pradesh (148), Haryana (104) and Bihar (91). Despite such high numbers, none of these states have taken even a single step to stop these deaths.

NAMASTE (National Action for Mechanised Sanitation Ecosystem) scheme was launched by the Modi government in July 2023. The scheme had an allocation of Rs. 349.73 Cr though for building toilets. While, under Swachh Bharat scheme, government had already spent Rs 19 thousand Cr for building 12 Cr toilets. However, neither was the sanitation ecosystem mechanised, nor were dry toilets completely eliminated.

Ironically and unfortunately, all these years ministers in the Modi government kept denying these sordid facts in Parliament, stating, shockingly, that there were no deaths in the country due to Manual Scavenging. Clearly, the act meant or means nothing for them. It also shows, how much government values the lives of Safai Karmacharis, who are still considered to be untouchables.

The SKA has demanded that the Prime Minister intervenes immediately to announce a complete full stop to deaths inside sewers and septic tanks. The press release has been issued by Bezwada Wilson, National Convenor, SKA.

Related:

58 reported deaths in Gujarat in last 5 years: Union Govt data reveals deaths due to cleaning of sewers and septic tanks

Continuing deaths of sewer workers reveals a cynical culture of impunity

941 deaths while cleaning sewers, septic tanks: Centre informs Rajya Sabha

The post Though sewer deaths have crossed the 100 mark this year, government is silent: SKA appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Since its launch in early June of 2026 by the newly elected Kerala government, Operation Toofan: The Narco Hunt has received widespread public support and rapidly emerged as Kerala’s most visible anti-drug campaign, with videos of raids, arrests, and drug seizures dominating social media. Presented as a comprehensive response to the growing circulation of narcotics and synthetic drugs, Operation Toofan claims enforcement measures with preventive interventions.

Alongside coordinated operations by the police and excise departments, the campaign expectedly engages schools, parents, and civil society organisations in awareness and prevention efforts. Within a short period, thousands of arrests have been made and large quantities of narcotics and banned tobacco products have been seized in the state.

Few would disagree that substance abuse poses serious challenges and requires intervention. Yet the significance of Operation Toofan extends beyond its official objectives. Like many contemporary policing campaigns, it has developed a parallel life online. Reports of inspections, arrests, and searches circulate across social media platforms and news ecosystems alike, where they are viewed, shared, and commented upon by thousands of users. It is within this digital circulation that a more complex social narrative begins to emerge.

A closer look at hundreds of the images and videos associated with Operation Toofan in digital platform reveals a striking pattern. One place appears repeatedly: Perumbavoor. And within these representations, one group appears with particular frequency: interstate migrant workers.

Perumbavoor occupies a unique position in Kerala’s social landscape. Over the last three decades, this town in Ernakulam district has become one of the state’s most important hub of migrant workers. The presence of workers from Assam, West Bengal, Bihar, Odisha, and several other states have become indispensable to its industries, construction sector, workshops, restaurants, and numerous other economic activities. The studies suggest that the migrant population in and around the town runs into lakhs, earning Perumbavoor the popular label of Kerala’s migrant capital.

Yet Perumbavoor’s significance extends well beyond its economic role. Over time, it has come to occupy a symbolic place in Kerala’s public imagination. Debates surrounding migration, demographic change, public safety, labour, and law and order frequently converge on the town. Perumbavoor has become a site onto which broader anxieties about social transformation are projected.

Long before the launch of Operation Toofan, these anxieties had already found expression on social media. Numerous pages devoted to local news, public affairs, and neighbourhood issues regularly circulated photographs, videos, and reels portraying migrant workers through recurring themes of drug use, alleged criminality, sex work, unhygienic living conditions, and urban disorder. Individually, such posts appeared to document isolated incidents.

Collectively, however, they constructed a recurring visual narrative in which Perumbavoor itself was imagined as a city under threat, with migrant workers positioned as its principal source of decline. These representations often extended beyond the town, inviting viewers to imagine Perumbavoor as a warning about Kerala’s future if migration remained unchecked.

Operation Toofan entered an already established visual landscape and supplied it with a continuous stream of new images. Videos of police inspections in migrant settlements, searches of labour camps, checking of buses occupied significantly by migrant workers, arrests, and drug seizures rapidly circulated across various platforms. Existing accounts intensified their coverage, while new influencer pages also began producing content centered on the campaign. In some instances, the act of filming migrant settlements itself was framed as civic responsibility or courageous reporting, and such content was subsequently circulated and amplified across platforms.

The issue is not whether illegal activities exist. Drug use and trafficking are social problems that cut across communities, classes, and regions. Nor is the issue whether law enforcement should intervene. The more important question is how these interventions are represented and understood once they enter the digital public sphere.

Social media rarely reward complexity. Videos are edited into short, dramatic formats designed to maximise attention, while captions emphasise danger, urgency, and confrontation. Background music, visual effects, and selective framing transform routine enforcement activities into highly emotional spectacles. Within these compressed narratives, the broader realities of migration and the lives of migrant workers disappear. Questions about labour conditions, housing arrangements, wage insecurity, social exclusion, and economic dependence receive little attention. Instead, what remains visible is a simplified image of the migrant worker, repeatedly associated with surveillance, suspicion, and disorder. The comment sections beneath many of these contents reveal how such associations are reinforced. Alongside support for anti-drug measures are comments that directly connect migrant workers with crime, insecurity, and social decline. While these views are far from universal, the constant repetition of similar visual narratives gives them greater credibility. Images begin to function as evidence, and repeated exposure gradually transforms isolated incidents into general assumptions about entire populations.

What is equally important is what remains unseen. As claimed operation Toofan is not structured solely around raids and arrests. Officially, the campaign combines enforcement with awareness programs involving schools, parents, community organisations, and government agencies. The stated objective is not merely to identify offenders, but to address substance abuse as a broader social problem.

Yet the visibility of the campaign appears highly uneven in Perumbavoor. During the period the contents get widespread appreciation is the inspections, raids, and arrests than images of awareness sessions, community engagement, counselling initiatives, or preventive programs. This selective visibility has important consequences. Drug use is a complex social issue that cannot be addressed through punitive measures alone. Long-term responses require education, rehabilitation, public health interventions, and community participation. However, when enforcement becomes the dominant public image of a campaign, the problem itself begins to appear as something that can be solved primarily through surveillance and control.
This dynamic is particularly significant because migrant workers already occupy a vulnerable social position within Kerala. They are essential to the functioning of the state’s economy, yet they often remain socially peripheral. Many live in segregated housing clusters, work in demanding conditions, and have limited access to political representation. Linguistic differences, mobility, and weak institutional support make it difficult for them to challenge narratives constructed about them. As a result, they become highly visible to systems of surveillance while remaining relatively invisible within public debates about their own lives.

The visibility produced by Operation Toofan therefore operates unevenly. While the campaign targets drug-related activities, the public images generated by it often concentrate on particular spaces and populations. Over time, this can produce a feedback loop, as the Kozhikode city and rural police stepped-up surveillance in migrant workers settlements across the district recently. Increased surveillance in migrant-dense areas generates more images. More images generate greater public attention. Greater attention strengthens the perception that these areas are inherently problematic. The result is not simply the policing of crime, but the production of places and populations that become permanently associated with suspicion.

Perumbavoor illustrates this process clearly. The town’s association with migrant labour has increasingly merged with public concerns about law and order. In the digital environment, where visual content travels faster than context, these associations acquire new strength. A police raid becomes a reel. A reel becomes a viral post. A viral post becomes a widely shared narrative about who constitutes a threat. Through repetition, suspicion acquires the appearance of common sense.

There is a broader irony here. Kerala’s economy depends heavily on migrant workers. From construction sites and manufacturing units to hotels and service industries, migrant labour has become indispensable to everyday economic life. Yet the same workers who sustain these sectors frequently appear in public discourse not as contributors, but as subjects of concern. This reveals a deeper contradiction within Kerala’s development model: economic dependence does not automatically translate into social acceptance.

Operation Toofan was launched to address the problem of drugs. But its public afterlife raises larger questions about migration, belonging, and representation. How are particular communities made visible through policing? How does social media shape public perceptions of crime? And why do certain groups become recurring symbols of social anxiety?

Perumbavoor is not merely a geographical location where these questions arise. It has become a symbolic city in Kerala’s imagination, a place where fears about migration, crime, and social order converge. Operation Toofan did not create these anxieties. Yet the campaign has made visible the ways in which they circulate and acquire legitimacy.

The danger lies not only in misrepresentation but in normalisation. When suspicion is repeated often enough, it begins to appear natural. Migrant workers cease to be seen primarily as workers, neighbors, or residents. Instead, they become symbols within a larger narrative about risk and security.

In that sense, the most important story emerging from Operation Toofan may not simply be about drugs. It may be about how certain populations come to be recognised as the most visible suspects in Kerala’s public imagination.

Courtesy: The AIDEM

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According to data presented in Lok Sabha during March, at least 622 sanitation workers died in sewers and septic tank incidents across India since 2017 with Uttar Pradesh recording the highest fatalities at 86. This highlights the structural risks and vulnerabilities faced by sanitation workers.

At a press conference organised by the Dalit Adivasi Shakti Adhikar Manch (DASAM) in New Delhi in May 2026, they revealed that at least 36 sanitation workers died while cleaning sewers, septic tanks, drains and sewage chambers between March and May 2026. Referring to the data presented in Parliament, DASAM said that out of the 622 deaths, 317 occurred between 2021 and 2025. Most of the workers belonged to Valmiki communities, other historically marginalised caste groups, or migrant labour background. [1]

Most sanitation workers in Ward 66 belong to the Balmiki caste, historically associated with sanitation labour and among the most marginalised Dalit communities. Many of these workers live in clustered settlements and are employed, directly or indirectly, by the Lucknow Municipal Corporation (LMC), reflecting the enduring link between caste and sanitation work.

Workers further allege that Rajput used casteist slurs for the workers, even threatening termination for non-compliance. Such allegations also raise questions under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, which criminalises caste-based abuse and intimidation.

Altogether, these accusations point to potential violations of legal protections against caste-based discrimination. Despite these allegations, the supervisor continues to remain in his position, raising questions about accountability and enforcement of existing laws.

While sanitation workers employed by the Lucknow Municipal Corporation (LMC) are issued formal joining letters outlining the terms and conditions to their employment, access to these documents is not always guaranteed. A 25-year-old worker, who wished to remain anonymous, said he has been working with the LMC for nearly a year, yet his joining letter has been withheld. He alleges that requests for the document have been met with derogatory remarks about his caste and class, along with threats of termination. “What are we supposed to show when we get into an accident?” questioned one of the workers.

The workers expressed their dissatisfaction by gathering on June 10, 2026 to protest and demand their additional Rs. 2000 and four days of holidays, while giving the authorities 3 days to act. They allege that authorities at Lucknow Swachhata Abhiyan (LSA) had stated they will be firing Avinash, but they are yet to hear back, despite three days already having passed by.

The allegations against Rajput, however, are not isolated incidents but part of a broader pattern within the sanitation system in Lucknow. One where accountability is inconsistent and often remains unchecked.

“The mayor, Sushma Kharakwa, had already fired him once. We are not sure why he came back,” said another worker.

While ward 66 is struggling to call out the corruption and discrimination, workers say that such situations are far from unique. Across all wards, Sweepers working with LMC are expected to also clean the sewers or pick up animal carcasses if asked. Many of these workers, often in their 20s, say they are required to descend up to five feet into sewers to carry out manual cleaning. For deeper drains, the Lucknow Municipal Corporation (LMC) deploys mechanised equipment, though workers allege this is not always consistently implemented.

Cost considerations often shape these decisions, with workers revealing that bringing in machinery to clean the sewer becomes expensive. The cost adds up with fuel, travel and hiring operators.

This is where private contractors come in with the hopes of saving money that would otherwise be spent on the machinery. “thekedaars allegedly take Rs. 5000-6000 and give their workers 500-600. A government employed sanitation worker would get around Rs. 1000.”

While law is framed to safeguard Scheduled castes, sanitation workers in Lucknow are still fighting for lawful existence. On June 6, 2026 Lalaram, a 28-year-old sanitation worker went into a manhole with only a rope as instructed by his supervisor on scene, Akash Kumar. He soon lost consciousness and was rushed to a hospital, his supervisor. Initially being taken to Ram Manohar Lohia Institute of Medical Sciences (RMLIMS), Akash diverted him to a private hospital. Lalaram died before receiving medical care and Akash Kumar fled the scene. The ward’s corporator is Arun Rai, a representative of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). When contacted, he refused to be interviewed on the topic.

The incident drew responses from city authorities. Mayor Sushma Kharakwa and Municipal Commissioner Gaurav Kumar announced action against the contractor, including blacklisting the firm and initiating an FIR. Financial assistance was also promised to the family.

Workers remain sceptical, questioning whether meaningful change will follow. Many say that the response to the incident has been driven largely by media attention and local political support, which may ensure compensation for the family. However, the larger concern around the safety of sanitation workers continues to persist. “Usually, the supervisors of these private contractors run away after such incidents, and then nothing ends up happening,” said one of the workers.

With Lucknow ranking the third cleanest city in 2024-2025. The irony remains, with regular derogatory comments and a clear spatial hostility moving fluidly between the private and government employees for sanitation work. 

(The author is an independent journalist, currently pursuing masters in Convergent Journalism at AJK MCRC, Jamia Millia Islamia)

[1] These statistics presented in Parliament were reported I The Hindu among other publications

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Safai Shramik Union raises demands for a law that safeguards rights of sanitation workers: Maharashtra

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Yet from the start of the protests in April 2026, the state attempted to reduce the protests into something smaller, narrower, and more criminal than they actually were. What was unfolding in Noida was not merely a law-and-order disturbance. It was not an irrational outbreak of mob violence. Nor was it simply a reaction to one wage notification.

It was the culmination of years of accumulated distress inside India’s industrial economy. The protests represented the eruption of long-suppressed anger over stagnant wages, forced overtime, unsafe working conditions, contractual exploitation, rising inflation, arbitrary deductions, labour insecurity, and the collapse of institutional mechanisms through which workers could negotiate with employers.

For perhaps the first time in years, the invisible workforce powering India’s manufacturing economy forced itself into national visibility. In addition, the state responded not with dialogue or labour mediation — but with policing, criminalisation, conspiracy narratives, mass FIRs, detentions, and coercive force.

That response revealed something fundamental about the contemporary Indian political economy: labour unrest is increasingly treated not as a democratic or industrial issue but as a security threat.

The industrial glory of Noida was built on invisible and disposable labour

For more than two decades, Noida and Greater Noida have been projected by governments, investors, and industry bodies as symbols of India’s industrial transformation — sprawling manufacturing corridors representing export growth, technological expansion, and integration into global supply chains. Electronics assembly plants, garment export units, pharmaceutical industries, footwear factories, automobile ancillary hubs, and mobile-phone manufacturing facilities turned the region into one of North India’s most important industrial belts.

Political speeches, investment summits, and corporate campaigns repeatedly celebrated Noida as evidence of India’s emergence as a global manufacturing destination under initiatives such as “Make in India.” But beneath this image of industrial modernity existed a vast labour regime built upon invisibility, insecurity, and disposability.

The industrial economy of Noida depended overwhelmingly on migrant labourers arriving from Bihar, eastern Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, Bengal, Odisha, Assam, and other economically distressed regions. These workers migrated not because industrial employment guaranteed stability, but because rural economies increasingly offered little possibility of survival amid agrarian distress, shrinking agricultural incomes, indebtedness, and chronic unemployment.

Once inside Noida’s industrial ecosystem, many workers entered conditions defined by insecurity, overcrowding, exhausting work schedules, and near-total absence of bargaining power. As The Times of India reported during the protests, large numbers of workers employed across electronics factories, garment units, footwear industries, and ancillary manufacturing facilities earned roughly between ₹11,000 and ₹13,000 per month despite routinely working extended shifts. Workers and labour organisers told the newspaper that shifts regularly stretched beyond eight hours, often reaching 10–12 hours during periods of intense production demand.

Several workers alleged that overtime had effectively become compulsory. According to accounts cited in The Indian Express, workers frequently began shifts early in the morning and returned late at night after exhausting factory schedules, leaving little time for sleep, recovery, or family life. In many factories, labourers alleged that refusal to comply with overtime expectations risked threats, penalties, or removal from work rosters.

The wage structure itself revealed the depth of economic exploitation. Even before deductions, monthly wages barely sustained survival within NCR’s rapidly rising cost of living. After accounting for rent, transport, food, electricity, and remittances sent back to families in villages, many workers reportedly retained almost nothing by the end of the month.

Contract labour became the central mechanism of industrial control

One of the clearest realities exposed by the Noida protests was that the industrial economy of NCR no longer functions primarily through stable, direct employment. Instead, it increasingly operates through a vast contract labour regime that allows industries to maximise production while minimising accountability.

The modern factory system in Noida is built not merely on low wages, but on deliberately structured insecurity.

Across electronics factories, garment export units, footwear industries, pharmaceutical facilities, automobile ancillary plants, and mobile-phone assembly units, workers repeatedly stated during the protests that they were employed not directly by companies but through contractors, labour suppliers, manpower agencies, and intermediaries who controlled recruitment, attendance, wages, discipline, and dismissals. Reports by Hindustan Times described these intermediaries as effectively functioning as “shop-floor fixers” operating between management and labour.

This structure was not incidental to industrial production. It became central to the organisation of industrial power. The contractor system served several purposes simultaneously:

• insulating companies from direct legal liability,
• fragmenting workers into unstable categories,
• weakening collective bargaining,
• discouraging unionisation,
• and ensuring labour remained permanently replaceable.

Workers repeatedly described how insecurity itself became a mechanism of industrial discipline, as reported by The Wire.

Many alleged they had no written contracts and could be removed from work without explanation. Others stated that labourers were routinely terminated before they became eligible for statutory protections, bonuses, provident fund benefits, or wage increments. Accounts documented in reports by The Indian Express and labour organisers covering the protests suggested that the fear of sudden dismissal had become normalised inside factories.

The figures cited during the protests were staggering:

• 58.2% of workers reportedly had no written employment contract,
• 51.7% lacked social security protections,
• over 47% were not entitled to paid leave.

These numbers revealed something fundamental about Noida’s industrial economy: Insecurity was not exceptional. It had become structural.

Even inside formally organised manufacturing systems linked to major domestic and international supply chains, workers increasingly existed in conditions resembling informal labour.

Reports emerging during the protests, including coverage by Scroll and labour-rights commentators, repeatedly highlighted how contractualisation fragmented workers inside the same factory. Workers performing identical labour often belonged to different employment categories depending on the contractor through whom they were hired. This meant different wage structures, different entitlements, and different levels of vulnerability despite identical work on the same production lines. The contractor system therefore did more than reduce labour costs. It actively prevented worker solidarity.

Workers alleged that attendance systems were manipulated, overtime compensation arbitrarily reduced, and deductions imposed without transparency. Multiple reports documented complaints regarding deductions for aprons, uniforms, slippers, safety equipment, and even questionable “ITI diploma” schemes that workers believed either did not exist or offered no meaningful educational benefit.

Several workers reportedly told journalists and labour organisers that raising complaints about overtime, wage deductions, or conditions could lead to immediate removal from work rosters. This fear was economically devastating for migrant workers. For labourers supporting families in villages while surviving in rented industrial settlements around Noida, losing employment could immediately trigger hunger, debt, or eviction.

As per The Caravan, women workers faced particularly severe vulnerabilities inside this structure. Reports by independent media platforms and labour groups documenting the protests described complaints regarding overcrowded and unhygienic toilets, inadequate sanitation facilities, and dismissive responses from supervisors when concerns were raised. Contractual insecurity also made reporting harassment or abuse significantly more difficult because workers feared retaliation or dismissal.

The Noida protests therefore exposed how contractualisation had fundamentally transformed industrial relations in India. The contractor system was no longer merely a labour arrangement. It had become the primary architecture through which industrial discipline, labour suppression, and economic control were maintained across India’s manufacturing economy.

Inflation turned low wages into a survival crisis

The immediate economic context behind the protests was critical. By early 2026, industrial workers across the NCR region were already under immense financial pressure. The energy crisis triggered by geopolitical tensions in West Asia and disruptions around the Strait of Hormuz sharply increased fuel prices across India. LPG costs surged, transport became more expensive, and food inflation intensified dramatically.

For workers already surviving on stagnant wages, the consequences were devastating. Indian Express and The New Indian Express repeatedly documented workers explaining how monthly wages no longer covered basic survival expenses. Rent alone reportedly consumed one-third to half of monthly income for many migrant labourers living in overcrowded industrial settlements around Noida and Greater Noida.

One worker described returning to cooking on a wood-fired chulha because LPG cylinders had become unaffordable. Others explained that after paying rent and transport expenses, almost nothing remained for food, healthcare, or family support.

The protests therefore emerged from material desperation. This was not abstract labour dissatisfaction. Workers were confronting the collapse of subsistence itself. The erosion of real wages had become impossible to ignore. Even as industrial productivity increased and companies expanded production, workers experienced declining purchasing power and worsening living conditions. The industrial economy demanded more labour from workers while giving them less capacity to survive. That contradiction produced explosive anger.

Haryana’s wage hike triggered an explosion that was already building

The immediate trigger for the Noida uprising came from neighbouring Haryana. After sustained labour unrest and wage-related mobilisation across industrial centres such as Manesar, Gurugram, and Faridabad, the Haryana government announced a substantial increase in minimum wages in April 2026. As per The Hindu, the revised wage rates reportedly increased minimum pay for unskilled workers from roughly ₹11,000–11,300 to more than ₹15,000 per month.

The announcement spread rapidly through worker WhatsApp groups, labour settlements, contractor networks, factory dormitories, and informal worker circles across Noida and Greater Noida. Its political impact was immediate. Workers across industrial belts in Uttar Pradesh began directly comparing their wages with those offered in neighbouring Haryana for nearly identical work.

The question emerging inside factories was devastatingly simple: Why were workers producing for the same industrial economy being paid thousands less simply because they worked across a state border?

This comparison carried enormous political force because Noida, Greater Noida, Gurugram, Manesar, and Faridabad do not function as isolated industrial regions. They form part of an interconnected NCR manufacturing ecosystem where labour, contractors, and production networks constantly move across state boundaries. Workers assembling electronics, garments, automobile components, footwear products, or mobile phones in Noida often performed labour nearly identical to workers employed in factories in Manesar or Gurugram. Yet wage structures differed dramatically.

Coverage by Scroll, and worker testimonies documented by independent labour-rights groups highlighted how workers increasingly viewed this disparity as evidence of deliberate labour suppression rather than economic necessity. The comparison with Haryana transformed workplace dissatisfaction into political anger. Workers and labour organisers reportedly argued that industrial competitiveness in Uttar Pradesh increasingly depended upon keeping labour cheaper, more weakly protected, and less organised than neighbouring states.

This was one of the most important dimensions of the protests. The Noida unrest rapidly became about far more than a single wage revision. It exposed a broader development model in which states compete for industrial investment by suppressing labour costs, expanding contractualisation, weakening collective bargaining structures, and maintaining a permanently insecure workforce.

The collapse of labour institutions left workers with only the streets

One of the deepest structural causes behind the unrest was the collapse of institutional labour negotiation mechanisms. Historically, industrial disputes in India were mediated through trade unions, labour commissioners, conciliation systems, industrial tribunals, and collective bargaining processes. Those systems have steadily weakened.

Reports by Article 14 and others repeatedly noted that workers today possess very few effective institutional avenues through which grievances can be meaningfully addressed. The weakening of trade unions combined with the expansion of contract labour fragmented workers and undermined collective organising.

As a result, workers increasingly felt that no institutional mechanism existed through which employers or the state would seriously engage with their grievances. This is crucial to understanding the escalation in Noida. The unrest did not emerge because workers suddenly became violent or irrational. It emerged because institutional channels for labour negotiation had been systematically hollowed out.

Workers turned to the streets because the structures historically meant to mediate industrial conflict had largely collapsed. The tragedy is that the state itself helped weaken these institutions — and then responded to the resulting unrest through coercion instead of reconstruction.

 Labour Codes deepened worker anxiety and distrust

The protests also unfolded against the backdrop of the implementation of the four Labour Codes in late 2025. The Codes covering wages, industrial relations, occupational safety, and social security were promoted as reforms intended to modernise labour regulation and improve ease of doing business. But workers and labour scholars increasingly viewed them differently.

Many feared that the reforms weakened labour protections while expanding managerial power and flexibility.

Labour economist K.R. Shyam Sundar noted in The Indian Express that the new framework created uncertainty regarding working-hour limits and increased executive discretion in labour regulation. Workers repeatedly alleged that “flexibility” effectively meant longer hours, increased overtime pressure, and weaker enforcement of labour standards.

The old Factories Act imposed clearer restrictions on daily working hours and spread-over limits. Critics argued that the new framework diluted these protections under the language of reform. Importantly, many workers reportedly expected the Labour Codes to improve wages and standardise protections after their implementation in November 2025. When these expectations were not realised, frustration deepened dramatically. Workers increasingly perceived labour reform not as protection but as deregulation in favour of industrial capital.

The critical appraisal of the new labour codes may be read here.

The state reframed a labour crisis as a security threat

Perhaps the most alarming feature of the Noida protests was how rapidly the Uttar Pradesh government transformed what was fundamentally a labour and economic crisis into a security operation. From the very beginning, the state appeared far more willing to investigate conspiracy than exploitation.

Instead of foregrounding the actual grievances driving workers onto the streets — stagnant wages, inflation, contractual exploitation, unpaid overtime, unsafe working conditions, arbitrary dismissals, and collapsing labour protections — the official response increasingly shifted toward the language of destabilisation, subversion, and law-and-order threat.

As reported across The Hindu, senior officials and police authorities repeatedly suggested that “outside forces” and organised conspirators were responsible for the unrest.

Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath publicly suggested that “urban naxalites” and disruptive actors were attempting to provoke industrial instability. Simultaneously, sections of the police and administration alleged that Pakistani social media handles had amplified misinformation surrounding the protests.

This framing was not politically neutral. It fundamentally altered the meaning of the protests themselves. Workers demanding dignified wages and humane working conditions were no longer treated primarily as citizens articulating economic grievances. They were increasingly portrayed as potential instruments of destabilisation.

The implication was deeply dangerous: Large-scale labour mobilisation itself became suspicious. The state effectively suggested that worker anger on such a scale could not emerge organically from economic suffering and structural exploitation. Instead, unrest had to be explained through hidden instigators, ideological infiltration, foreign amplification, or organised conspiracy. This reflected a broader political tendency increasingly visible across India — the securitisation of democratic dissent.

Economic protest was not treated as evidence of policy failure, labour distress, or institutional collapse. It was reframed as a threat to public order and industrial stability. This shift carried enormous consequences.

Once labour unrest was classified as a security problem rather than a social or economic issue, coercive policing became easier to justify while structural questions about wages, labour protections, and exploitation were pushed into the background.

Coverage and commentary emerging during the protests in Scroll.in repeatedly warned that this narrative erased workers’ own political agency. The implication was that workers themselves were incapable of collectively resisting exploitation unless manipulated by hidden actors.

Historically, this has been one of the most common methods used by states to delegitimise labour movements. By converting economic anger into conspiracy, governments avoid confronting the structural conditions that produced the unrest in the first place.

The tragedy of the Noida response was that it prevented any serious political engagement with the actual realities workers were describing: impossible living costs, wage stagnation, contractor exploitation, unsafe workplaces, and the collapse of labour negotiation mechanisms. The more the state emphasised conspiracy, the less it spoke about labour. And that silence revealed the deeper priorities underlying the response.

Detailed report on fact finding on Noida protest may be read here.

Police repression became the state’s primary language

As the protests intensified around April 13, the state moved decisively away from negotiation and toward coercive suppression. What began as labour unrest was increasingly met with the machinery of criminal law, mass policing, surveillance, and punitive force.

Reports emerging from Noida and Greater Noida in Hindustan Times described widespread lathi charges, raids, detentions, arrests, and sweeping FIRs filed against workers and unnamed persons allegedly involved in the protests. Workers and activists repeatedly alleged that police intervention escalated confrontations that had initially been localised and economically driven.

Instead of functioning as mediators attempting to reduce tensions, police operations increasingly appeared designed to demonstrate overwhelming state control. The scale of criminalisation was extraordinary.

According to reports emerging during the crackdown from The Indian Express, police registered cases against thousands of unnamed persons under serious penal provisions including rioting, unlawful assembly, destruction of property, and attempt to murder. Entire working-class neighbourhoods reportedly came under fear and surveillance.

Workers described police raids in labour settlements late at night. Families reportedly searched desperately for detained relatives without clear information regarding where they had been taken. Independent reports and labour-rights accounts alleged that minors and uninvolved persons were also picked up during police operations conducted across industrial localities.

Accounts emerging from detention facilities and Kasna jail raised serious constitutional concerns. Lawyers, labour organisers, and civil-rights activists cited in reports by Scroll.in alleged violations of Articles 21 and 22 of the Constitution, including arbitrary detentions, denial of timely legal access, failures to promptly inform families, and procedural irregularities surrounding arrests.

What was particularly striking was the collective nature of the crackdown. The policing increasingly resembled punitive action directed not only at specific accused individuals but at labour communities themselves. Fear spread rapidly through worker settlements across Noida and Greater Noida. The message being communicated by the state was unmistakable: Collective resistance would invite overwhelming coercive force.

This was especially significant because the protests themselves emerged from the collapse of institutional labour mediation mechanisms. Workers had already reached a point where they felt trade unions, labour departments, and industrial dispute systems no longer meaningfully addressed their grievances. The state’s response to this institutional collapse was not reconstruction of dialogue, rather it was criminalisation.

The criminalisation of labour solidarity was equally significant

The crackdown did not remain confined to workers physically present at protest sites. Very quickly, the focus of police action expanded toward labour organisers, student activists, writers, independent voices, and individuals publicly expressing solidarity with workers. What made this phase of the crackdown especially alarming was that the state increasingly appeared to treat labour organising itself as suspicious political activity.

The shift became particularly visible through the arrests and prosecutions that followed the April 13 protests. As reported by The Indian Express, police repeatedly alleged that the unrest had not emerged organically from worker anger but had instead been orchestrated by an “organised syndicate of outsiders.” Authorities claimed that labour organisers and activists associated with groups such as Mazdoor Bigul Dasta played a “significant role” in provoking violence, disrupting public order, and inciting workers.

This narrative became central to the state’s justification for the crackdown. Among the most prominent cases was that of Aditya Anand, a 28-year-old BTech graduate from National Institute of Technology Jamshedpur and an employee at Genpact, whom police described as a “mastermind” behind the Noida protests. As reported by The Indian Express, Anand was arrested from Tiruchirappalli in Tamil Nadu on April 18 and later linked by Haryana Police to separate labour unrest and violence in Manesar that had occurred four days before the Noida protests.

Police alleged that Anand delivered “provocative speeches,” organised marches, and encouraged workers to block roads. He was booked under multiple serious provisions, including rioting, unlawful assembly, assault on public servants, criminal conspiracy, and attempt to murder. Yet the details emerging about Anand’s background complicated the state’s narrative considerably.

His family described him not as a violent conspirator but as someone deeply engaged with labour issues and social movements. His younger brother told The Indian Express that Anand had rejected job opportunities abroad, including in Sweden, because he wanted to remain in India and work on issues affecting ordinary people. The family stated that he had long been associated with labour concerns and youth activism linked to the Naujawan Bharat Sabha, the organisation historically associated with Bhagat Singh.

The symbolism here was politically significant. A labour activist speaking publicly about workers’ rights was increasingly being framed through the language of criminal conspiracy and organised disorder. The crackdown intensified further in May when authorities invoked the stringent National Security Act against two accused linked to the protests: Aakriti Chaudhary, a 25-year-old history graduate from Delhi University, and former journalist Satyam Verma.

The use of the NSA marked a dramatic escalation. Preventive detention laws of this nature are generally associated with threats to national security or public order of an exceptional nature. Their invocation against individuals associated with labour protests and worker solidarity immediately raised concerns among civil-rights groups and labour organisations.

According to The Indian Express, police alleged that Chaudhary and Verma were active members of Mazdoor Bigul Dasta and had played “significant roles” in violence, arson, and disorder during the protests. But the accounts emerging from families and lawyers sharply challenged this narrative.

Aakriti Chaudhary’s father reportedly stated that she had been picked up from Botanical Garden Metro station on April 11 — two days before the violence on April 13 — raising serious questions about the chronology of the allegations against her. Her family argued that she had merely participated in activities supporting workers’ rights.

Her father, who works with Ganashakti, the CPI mouthpiece, told The Indian Express: “I’m proud that my daughter was raising her voice for workers’ rights. She is the Bhagat Singh of today.”

Similarly, advocates representing other accused argued that students and social workers had merely expressed solidarity with workers through speeches, meetings, and street plays — activities traditionally associated with democratic protest movements.

The case of Satyam Verma was equally revealing. Verma, a journalist and editor associated with writings on Bhagat Singh and anti-colonial political history, was arrested from his residence in Lucknow. Friends and associates described him as a long-time journalist, translator, and intellectual engaged with labour and democratic issues rather than violent mobilisation. Other arrests followed a similar pattern.

Himanshu Thakur, a 24-year-old history postgraduate from Hansraj College and a NET-qualified scholar, was accused of instigating crowds and coordinating violence. His family described him as someone involved in student activism, translation work, and social causes, including protests relating to student deaths during the Delhi flooding crisis.

What became increasingly visible through these arrests was a larger pattern: The state was collapsing the distinction between labour organising, political solidarity, and criminal conspiracy.

This distinction mattered enormously. Instead of recognising collective labour mobilisation as a democratic response emerging from exploitation, inflation, contractual insecurity, and wage stagnation, authorities increasingly personalised the unrest through narratives centred on masterminds, infiltrators, and ideological actors.

This framing effectively erased workers’ own political agency. The implication was that workers themselves could not independently organise resistance after years of economic distress and labour exploitation. Their anger had to be explained through manipulation by “outsiders.” Historically, states confronting labour unrest have often relied upon precisely this strategy.

Worker mobilisation is reframed not as a consequence of material exploitation but as evidence of political contamination or organised subversion. The consequences of such a framework extend far beyond one protest. Once labour solidarity itself becomes suspicious, the democratic space available for workers to organise, negotiate, document abuses, and collectively assert rights begins shrinking dramatically. This was what made the Noida crackdown especially significant. The issue was no longer merely how the state handled one industrial protest.

The deeper question was whether independent labour mobilisation itself was increasingly being treated as illegitimate within India’s contemporary industrial order — particularly when it challenged industrial profitability, disrupted production, or exposed the inequalities hidden beneath the language of economic growth and “Make in India” industrial success.

Detailed report on state crackdown on dissent may be read here.

Noida was one of the most important labour protests in contemporary India

The importance of Noida cannot be overstated. The protests formed part of a broader wave of labour unrest across industrial regions including Manesar, Surat, Panipat, Barauni, Faridabad, and other manufacturing hubs.

Across sectors and geographies, workers raised remarkably similar demands:

• living wages,
• overtime compensation,
• social security,
• dignified working conditions,
• stable employment,
• humane working hours.

This convergence revealed a national labour crisis. Noida exposed the widening contradiction at the centre of India’s economic model: expanding industrial growth and rising productivity alongside deepening worker insecurity and stagnant real wages. Most importantly, the protests revealed the limits of governing labour through precarity, exhaustion, fear, and suppression.

The interim wage hikes announced after the unrest only reinforced this reality. The government responded meaningfully only after workers paralysed industrial movement and disrupted production. That fact alone is a profound indictment of the existing labour regime.

Noida was not merely an industrial disturbance. It was a warning from the workforce sustaining India’s manufacturing economy — a warning that an industrial system built on insecurity, wage suppression, informalisation, and coercion cannot indefinitely maintain social peace.

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