Why send men inside sewers, often to their death, when a machine can easily do the same job? The thought struck Vimal Govind, one of the founders and CEO of Genrobotics, after he watched a video in which a labourer, covered in toxic waste, said he did the sewer-cleaning work as “it was his God-given duty”.

“They are made to believe this because of their caste,” Govind told The Patriot.

His company is ready to showcase its invention, a robot called ‘Bandicoot’, in Kerala’s Thiruvanthanapuram on February 26, which will lend a helping hand in the cleaning job so that no other man dies inside a dirty sewer.

Govind, who understood the job of manual scavenging and workers’ need for help after watching the video, pointed out that the machines currently available still need people to go into the sewage line, as all manholes in India are of different sizes and shapes, unlike other countries who construct sewage lines according to a set norm.

“We understood the problem and the need for a solution,” he said.

It took them seven months to come up with the idea of a robot, make a prototype and finally a real product. They got early stage funding from the Kerala Start-up Mission, which was looking out for such social justice ventures in technology, and have signed an MoU with the Kerala Water Authority (KWA).

The company has been approached by the state governments of Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Maharashtra, Punjab and Delhi.

Govind stated that “criticality is high in the northern states”, and wondered how long it would take these governments to make the product a working reality. “Our state government is fast and supports labour, but in other states, I don’t know how it’ll happen,” he said.

He hoped though, that their company’s invitation to the Swachh Bharat conference on February 22 and 23 would help them connect with the states and especially the Centre, “and bring about this mission to eliminate manual scavenging”.

He also wants to collaborate with communities to make the robots. For this too we need funding, he said, hoping they would get money from the government’s rehabilitation programme fund for manual scavengers.

But how serious is the central government about eliminating manual scavenging and rehabilitating those who still have to do the dirty job?

In 2017, PS Krishnan, former secretary in the ministry of welfare and member of the National Monitoring Committee for Education of SCs, STs and Persons with Disabilities, revealed that only Rs 47 crore had been spent for the same in 2014-15, or 10 per cent of the 2014-15 budget estimate (BE) provision of Rs 439.04 crore.

He further stated in his paper that the expenditure was worse in 2015-16, when the revised estimate (RE) was only Rs 10.01 crore compared to the BE of Rs 470.19 crore.

He underlined: “The gross under-utilisation in 2015-16 RE was taken as the base for 2016-17 BE and a mere Rs 10 crore was provided. Even this has been grossly under-utilised as seen from the 2016-17 RE of Rs 1 crore. And then in 2017-18, the BE has been further halved with a paltry provision of Rs 5 crore.”

The government needs to understand the gravity of the situation, so that in the chant of PM Narendra Modi’s Swachh Bharat programme, the voices of those who carry out such dehumanising and life-threatening work are not drowned.

Recently, the death of three manual scavengers was reported on February 14. They were asphyxiated while cleaning a septic tank in Ponthur near Sriperumbudur, Tamil Nadu.

One may ask what would happen to the sewer workers when the robots get into action. According to Govind, the semi-automatic robotic system will require humans – one will operate the machine and the other will need to collect the waste being cleaned.

Co-founder Arun George said their company would prioritise that jobs are not taken away and that better ones are provided. “The user interphase has been made simple, and local languages introduced, to allow labourers to understand the machines, he explained.

Govind echoed his sentiments, emphasising that they are working with the manual labourers to teach them the right skills to operate the machines. “We will train the labourers in the first phase of the launch,” he added.

Mathew T Thomas, Kerala’s minister for water resources, told The Patriot that “we should ensure their jobs are not taken away”, adding that the government wants people to “avoid such a pathetic way of work, so we will train them.”

The robot is expected to soon clean all of Kerala, but Thomas and the Bandicoot team believe it is one technology that must reach the entire country. Hopefully sooner, rather than later, for the many families who need a hand out of the gutters right this minute.

This story was published in the Patriot.