Author: Anuradha Raman & Debarshi Dasgupta
Publication: Outlook
Date: June 4, 2007
URL: http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20070604&fname=Cover+Story&sid=2
Introduction: Poverty knows no caste. Many
Brahmins eke out a living cleaning toilets, pulling rickshaws.
Not all Brahmins are successful technocrats
or bureaucrats. Across the country the poor among the upper-most Hindu caste
have to eke out a miserable existence like the rest of humanity's economically
deprived. In Delhi, Outlook caught up with sanitation workers employed by
Sulabh, an NGO which runs public toilets.
Forty of Sulabh's toilet cleaners are Brahmins,
most of them from Bihar. Says Kashinath Jha, a maintenance engineer at Sulabh:
"This is largely because of the abject poverty in Bihar." The Brahmin
sanitation staff are from what is believed to be a large Brahmin migrant labour
population in Delhi consisting of rickshaw-pullers, coolies and vegetable
vendors.
Kamlesh Chaudhary, one of the Brahmin sanitation
workers at Sulabh's toilet complex inside Azadpur vegetable market in Delhi,
says: "Our income from farming is meagre as the region where we come
from is prone to floods and drought. Most people like us leave in search of
jobs and come to the cities." Jha left home in Samastipur and joined
Sulabh six years ago after he heard of it from one of his relatives, another
Brahmin, who also works for the NGO. Kamlesh and others like him earn Rs 2,500
per month. Since they are provided food and lodging, they save enough money
to send back home. This, they say, is more than what they can earn working
as casual labourers.
Ramesh Jha, a Brahmin from Darbhanga in Bihar,
is also an employee at Sulabh. He came to Delhi seven years ago but had to
struggle. "I worked at a factory in Wazirpur for two months. I was paid
Rs 1,200 a month and I found it very difficult to survive." Ramesh then
switched to Sulabh after a chance meeting with one of its employees and is
currently employed at the second toilet complex inside the Azadpur mandi.
Doesn't the nature of his work upset him? "I have never had second thoughts
about working at Sulabh. Why should I? I am not stealing or committing any
crime. I have to earn my living and I am doing that here with my hard work,"
he says.
Cut to Pramod Kumar, 30, from small-town Bahraich
in Uttar Pradesh. He is a graduate but has been pulling a rickshaw in Delhi
for the last two years. He has kept this a secret from his folks back home.
"I don't quite know what to do with my caste. It is not going to fetch
me a government job. I am the only one in my family who pulls a rickshaw for
a living. My family thinks I am doing a sarkari job in Delhi and as long as
I keep sending the money they remain blissfully unaware," he says.
Not just in Delhi. In Benares, Mumbai, Chennai
and Jammu the plight of the poor Brahmin is the same. Poverty obviously knows
no caste.