Sanitation workers clean up a large drain in Bhopal, India on World Environment Day.

Sanitation workers clean up a large drain in Bhopal, India in June 2025. There are tens of thousands of such contracted labourers in Chennai, most of whom live in one of the 150 slums within the city's precincts. IMAGO/Matrix Images

Stinking filth: The political economy of scavenging

Vijay Prashad is a historian, author and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, an inter-movement research organisation based in Buenos Aires, Johannesburg, New Delhi and São Paulo. He is also the Chief Editor of LeftWord Books and a fellow at the Independent Media Institute. As a journalist, he writes for Frontline, the Hindu, and Turkey’s BirGün. He has been associated with Himal Southasian since its inception.

Published on:

23 Mar 2006, 10:18 am

In late January 2006, the sewer ran over. Our well-heeled street in Chennai pulsated with excreted lava. A work crew arrived to lift the manholes and break the pavement. By mid-morning, they had put pipes into the sewer and had begun pumping out as much of the sludge as possible. The smell overpowered everyone. Then a few of the men and women put plastic bags over their hair, lifted up their lungis and saris, and descended into the sewer.

They stood in the black treacle of shit, piss and other assorted matter, using bamboo sticks as oars to move the sewage around, and then buckets to pass it out to be deposited on the street. A little later, they left the holes to wash their feet and hands with water from a white plastic container. One man gave me a big smile and said, "dirty," in. English.

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