Danger in the sewer: On India’s sewer cleaning deaths

Despite legislation, Supreme Court orders, government programmes, the availability of mechanised cleaning technologies, and exhortations from politicians, India continues to lose sanitation workers to foreseeable, and largely preventable, circumstances. In a recent incident, four workers lost their lives in Ujjain, Madhya Pradesh, cleaning a hotel’s food-waste chamber.

According to Parliament and the National Commission for Safai Karamcharis data, the number of workers who died on jobs involving sewer and septic tanks was 859 between 2014 and 2025, 498 from 2019 to mid-2026, 332 across 18 States and Union Territories in 2021-26, and 1,350 between 1993 and 2025. The figures have never tended towards zero even as the Safai Karamchari Andolan has repeatedly alleged severe under-reporting.