Aryaman Kakkar's Archive

On April 17th, we visited the offices of the Safai Karamchari Andolan (SKA) in East Patel Nagar, New Delhi. There, we met with Bezwada Wilson, the founder of SKA, and his colleagues and National Coordinators at SKA, Dr. Renu Chachar, Poonam, and Usha. Wilson played a key role in the 2014 Supreme Court case that resulted in a significant ruling mandating that a compensation of Rs. 10 lakh be awarded in each case of death caused by manual scavenging. Furthermore, the court stated that the authorities must pursue legal action against those who are responsible for the death of manual scavengers. Wilson spoke to us about the challenges faced by manual scavengers in India. He shared with us his struggles in court where the government refused to legally recognize manual scavengers. The government's stance was that they had denied the existence of manual scavengers many times before the Supreme Court in the past. If they start recognizing manual scavengers now, it will create issues betwee...

The carriages pull in. We all pile in, a mass of urgency and appointments and last minute plans. The carriages move, powered by electrical horses, Poseidon and Zeus have had to adapt to collaborate to keep up in this damned economy. Even gods need to pay the rent  these days. We move, our eyes catching fixed shards of windows into houses, offices, lil shop complexes which become the beating heart of their own lil ecosystem. Not everyone can afford the wares of the inner circles. Flying sky high, we flit and flow across concrete flight paths without a sound. A sudden downhill descent, unnoticeable except for the slight push of gravity as if we are on a roller coaster, and the sunlight disappears. People shift a little closer, almost imperceptibly. We have always been afraid of caves shrouded in the dark.  We have our own caged suns and moons, poor Apollo, having to share territory with Zeus and Prometheus. Damn, and they were room mates. They rarely flicker. They rarely go out....