She knew her husband worked as a daily wager, but had no idea that he was a sewage worker. When his body was brought out of the gutter, it was covered in faecal matter. It stayed that way for hours. Nobody bothered to clean it. Even three years after his death, that terrible image remains framed in her mind.

“The widow, who narrated the incident to me, is still traumatized by the event,” says Deepthi Sukumar, a Chennai-based activist with NGO, Safai Karamchari Andolan (SKA). The two met inside an orange bus, carrying activists and family members of those who died inside the sewer lines, which is passing through 500 districts of 30 states and NCRs. Mission: Raise public awareness and force the government to announce a comprehensive action plan to end such fatalities. Named Bhim Yatra, the bus completed half of its journey this week and will finish its course in Delhi on April 13, the date of Babasaheb Ambedkar’s 125th birth anniversary.

“We are talking of smart cities today. But how can there be a smart city without smart, mechanized sewers where lives are not lost? Article 21 talks about right to life. But the truth is that our sewers are full of lethal gas and often become death traps. Yet everybody looks at the problem as a sanitation issue. Nobody is looking at it as a human rights issue,” says Bezwada Wilson, co-ordinator, SKA, which has launched the 125 day long bus yatra.

Reported by Times of India