"NAMASTE Sanitation Scheme Expanded to Rural Areas Amid Implementation Gaps"
NAMASTE
National Action for Mechanised Sanitation Ecosystem; scheme to mechanise sanitation work and rehabilitate sewer/septic tank workers.
Safai Udyami Yojana
sub-component of NAMASTE providing capital subsidies to SSWs for sanitation enterprises.
Manual scavenging and hazardous sanitation work have been a persistent social justice concern in India. Workers who clean sewers, septic tanks, and drains are overwhelmingly from Scheduled Caste communities. They face extreme occupational hazards, including death from toxic gases in confined spaces.
The Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, 2013 legally banned manual scavenging and mandated rehabilitation of identified manual scavengers. However, enforcement remained weak. Deaths in sewers and septic tanks continued to be reported every year. The law alone did not translate into on-ground change.
To address this gap, the government launched the National Action for Mechanised Sanitation Ecosystem (NAMASTE) scheme in 2023-24. It was designed as a joint initiative of the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment and the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs. The scheme aimed to eliminate sewer and septic tank deaths by mechanising sanitation work and rehabilitating the workers involved.
NAMASTE targets two main categories of workers: Sewer and Septic Tank Workers (SSWs) and manual scavengers. The scheme has several components. First, it profiles workers to build a database. Second, it provides capital subsidies of up to 50% of the total project cost to help workers set up their own sanitation-related enterprises under the Safai Udyami Yojana sub-component. Third, it supports the creation of Emergency Response Sanitation Units (ERSUs) in urban local bodies. Fourth, it distributes Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) kits and conducts training workshops.
The scheme also covers Private Sanitation Service Organisations (PSSOs), which are enterprises that can employ profiled workers. …
If a particular area is brought under the Fifth Schedule of the Constitution of India, which one of the following statements best reflects the consequence of it?
With reference to the NAMASTE scheme, consider the following statements:
1.It was launched to eradicate deaths in sewer and septic tank cleaning through mechanisation.
2.It is implemented solely by the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment.
3.The Safai Udyami Yojana is a sub-component that provides capital subsidies to sewer and septic tank workers.
Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
The National Commission for Scheduled Castes (NCSC) derives its constitutional authority from which Article of the Constitution of India?
Consider the following pairs regarding the NAMASTE scheme's proposed expansion:
1.New worker category added — Drain cleaners
2.New worker category added — Workers in Sewage Treatment Plants
3.New geographic scope — Rural India
4.Proposed financial outlay — ₹998 crore up to 2030-31
How many of the above pairs are correctly matched?
Assertion (A): The NAMASTE scheme's capital subsidy component has shown very low actual disbursement despite a large number of profiled beneficiaries.
Reason (R): The National Commission for Scheduled Castes has flagged high rejection rates in the self-employment components and the absence of transparent data on applications received and rejected.
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