"No Masks, No Gloves", 9 April 2020

While most Indians remain confined to their homes under a three-week national lockdown to keep the coronavirus at bay, 30-year-old Bhimrao Tambe still spends eight hours a day on Mumbai’s streets. A contract sanitation worker with the city’s civic authority, he picks up waste with his bare hands and loads it onto a truck—without gloves, boots, a uniform, or hand sanitizer. For this work, he is paid $4 a day. During the 17 years Tambe has worked as a waste collector, he has seen his colleagues develop skin, respiratory, and eye ailments; a few have lost fingers to acute infections. The health threat, however, never loomed as large as it does today as the coronavirus spreads across India.

India is home to 5 million sanitation workers like Tambe—who clear not just garbage but also sewers and public toilets. For paltry pay, these workers often come in direct contact with human waste, working with little or no equipment and protection. Exposed to toxic gases, they are often at risk of chronic diseases.. 

The situation is particularly dire for so-called manual scavengers—sanitation workers who manually remove human waste from latrines...