Cast/e in the sewers: The deaths of Sewer/Septic tank workers in Delhi. Research talk by Shahana Bhattacharya
School of Law,
Governance and Citizenship
Ambedkar University
Delhi
invites you to a talk on
Cast/e in
the sewers: The Un-accidental deaths of Sewer/Septic tank workers in
Delhi
by
Shahana
Bhattacharya
(Kirori Mal
College, University of Delhi)
On
November 14, 2019 (Thursday), 2 pm
Venue: G3,
Karampura Campus
About
the talk:
A large number of
workers have died in the last few years in Delhi while manually cleaning septic
tanks and sewers without safety equipment. These repeated deaths have occurred
despite strong laws and judgments that prohibit such conditions of work. This talk
will focus on how assumptions about the work of caste underlie the functioning
of the city. Caste based notions of stigma, attitudes to human waste and those
who handle them create conditions in which these workers' deaths become
inevitable and routine, and their lives, expendable.
About the speaker:
Shahana Bhattacharya is
a historian and teaches at the Kirori Mal College, University of Delhi. She has
worked on issues of caste and labour with particular emphasis on the notion of
stigmatized work. Shahana has also been associated with the democratic rights
movement for decades.