India, June 11 -- In 1884, the year Tokyo completed its first modern sewer network, Bombay's municipal commissioners were debating whether to extend water drainage to its native quarters. They decided against it, not for lack of funds or expertise, but because they had a workforce of hereditary, disenfranchised manual scavengers who made the question of modern sanitation infrastructure unnecessary. Such thinking continues to influence Indian attitudes to sanitation.

The 2011 Socio Economic and Caste Census identified roughly 2.6 million insanitary latrines in India, many of which still required manual cleaning. Activist organisations estimate that possibly over a million people, most of them Dalits and many of them women, remain engaged ...