Despite legal prohibition since 2013, manual scavenging persists in India. Critically examine the effectiveness of the NAMASTE scheme in eliminating this practice.

The Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, 2013 banned hazardous manual cleaning of sewers and septic tanks [1]. Yet 332 sanitation workers died in such work between January 2021 and June 2026 [4]. NAMASTE (2023) shifts the state's response from rehabilitation to mechanisation, but its gains so far are real yet partial.

Where NAMASTE has been effective

• Mechanisation mandate: a joint MoSJE–MoHUA scheme targeting zero fatalities and zero human contact with faecal matter, through machine-based cleaning and Emergency Response Sanitation Units (ERSUs) [2][3].
• Making the invisible visible: 84,902 Sewer and Septic Tank Workers validated (August 2025) — the first formal database of a workforce previously outside all records [2].
• Occupational safety floor: over 2.71 lakh PPE kits and 1.81 lakh workers under health insurance/Ayushman Bharat, plus 354 safety-device kits to ERSUs [5][2].
• Convergence model: MoSJE welfare funding delivered through MoHUA's Urban Local Bodies — a workable template for inter-ministerial welfare.

Where it falls short

• Deaths continue: of 332 recorded deaths, only 268 received full and 18 partial compensation [4] — the deficit is enforcement, not equipment.
• Protection is not elimination: PPE and insurance make entry safer, not unnecessary; workers still enter sewers where ULBs lack machines.
• Shallow rehabilitation: against 58,098 manual scavengers identified in the 2013 and 2018 surveys, only 27,926 were skill-trained and 2,803 received self-employment capital subsidy [5] — caste-locked occupational mobility persists.
• Coverage gap: delivery runs through urban ULBs, leaving rural and peri-urban hazardous cleaning largely untouched [3].
• Weak prosecution under the 2013 Act, with contractual outsourcing diffusing employer liability [1].

NAMASTE has made sanitation work counted, insured and partly mechanised — but counting is not yet abolition. Tying ULB funding to verified machine availability, enforcing compensation norms strictly, and extending the scheme rurally can convert safety measures into genuine elimination, realising Article 21's promise of life with dignity.