Designing Systemic Interventions to Sustainably Eradicate Manual Scavenging in India
Saatchi, a documentation, legal aid, and educational platform for sanitation workers and their families
M. Srinivasan Bavani (TU Delft - Industrial Design Engineering)
V. Pannunzio – Mentor (TU Delft - Industrial Design Engineering)
S.W. Franklin – Mentor (TU Delft - Industrial Design Engineering)
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Abstract
Manual scavenging, the manual removal of human excreta from sewers, septic tanks, and dry latrines, remains active in India despite prohibition under the 1993 Act and the Manual Scavengers Act of 2013. This thesis argues that the practice is not an oversight of the legal system but a product of it. The government maintains a near zero death record through semantic evasion, reclassifying sewer deaths as hazardous cleaning accidents, which denies victims their legal identity and their families compensation. Rooted in the caste system and forced upon Dalit communities as a hereditary occupation, the practice is sustained by generational poverty, institutional impunity, cultural indifference, and the deliberate absence of worker identity documentation. Without formal records, workers cannot be counted, compensated, or protected.
The research treats manual scavenging as a wicked problem that cannot be resolved through isolated, single-domain interventions. Using systemic design, it combines desk research, expert interviews with frontline activists, and documentary analysis to map the system as a set of reinforcing loops and to identify leverage points for change. The central insight is that recognition through documentation is the point of highest leverage. The outcome is Saatchi, a platform that registers workers into tamper-resistant records, issues a physical safety and documentation kit, connects families to legal aid, and educates the public through courses.