Who keeps India's railway stations clean? A study of the broom, caste and Dalit women in Hyderabad

During the Clean India campaign, some Dalit-Bahujan politicians refused to hold a broom. They asked for social justice instead of a stereotype. Pallavi Gupta, a geographer, writes that this “Dalit refusal of the broom marks it as a political object” (p. 248).

Her study shows why. At two railway stations in Hyderabad, the cleaning that makes Clean India visible was done mostly by Dalit women with hand-held brooms, often without their wages on time and with no place to eat or change. Gupta argues that caste is how the railways and their contractors get stations cleaned at the lowest cost.

What the researcher did

In 2019, Gupta interviewed 20 cleaning workers and supervisors, 17 women and 3 men, at two stations she calls Station A and Station B (p. 237). Most of the workers were women aged 25 to 65, and most were Dalit. A few were Lambada, a community listed as a Scheduled Tribe in Telangana. Some were Christian or Muslim, and one was an upper-caste Hindu woman. She also read the railways’ cleaning procedures and the Clean India reports.

She uses an idea called racial capitalism: that capitalism does not erase old hierarchies but profits from them. She does not claim caste is race. “It is important to ask what caste does,” she writes, “rather than whether caste is race” (p. 239).

What she found

Outsourcing made the workers cheaper. The railways had handed cleaning to contractors who bid for it. As early as 2007, an official audit found 113 of 298 stations had outsourced cleaning (p. 242). To make a profit, Gupta found, contractors resorted to “wages below minimum rate; untimely wages; non-payment of bonus; denial of PF; no job guarantee; and formulation of arbitrary rules” (p. 242). PF is the Provident Fund, a statutory retirement saving.

The workers described what that meant:

• At Station B, the contractor had not paid wages for a month. “They ask us to do the cleaning work but don’t pay us salaries,” said Ruji, who finished at 10 pm and got home by midnight. She did not know her PF number (p. 243).
• At Station A, a 12-point grooming checklist banned large earrings, flowers in the hair and more than one bangle. Unni forgot her socks, ran to buy a pair, and lost the day’s work anyway. “I used my bus fare to buy socks, now I will walk home” (p. 244).
• A new contractor barred anyone over 59, and women employed for ten years lost their jobs (p. 244).

The workers organised where they could. At Station B, workers unionised and won the minimum wage, though not their arrears (p. 243). At Station A, a worker checked that no one was listening before saying the contractor discouraged unions.

The broom marked who did the dirtiest work. Machines cleaned the first platform, where long-distance trains, officials and VIPs arrive. Men mostly drove them. Elsewhere, on the tracks, in the toilets and on the other platforms, women swept with short brooms that force the body to bend close to the waste (pp. 241, 249). Supervisors said women were “adept at using the broom”. Women cleaners answered, “have you seen men use a broom at home?” (p. 248). Gupta concludes that “women cleaners become domestic workers of the state” (p. 248). In her reading, caste and gender work together here, not separately.

Space and policy left the cleaners out. At Station B, the women’s lunch and changing room had an open drain and windows with no curtains, so they changed in the corridor. At Station A they had no room, and some changed behind buses in the car park, while the contractor’s office had its own washroom (pp. 245–246). The Clean Railways campaign, Gupta writes, has many provisions on cleanliness, but “none of them talk about the cleaning workers” (p. 246).

Why it matters

The study points to where protection fails. A 2015 government committee advised the railways to treat cleaning as a “non-core” activity done by contract (p. 242). Once that happens, statutory rights such as the minimum wage and PF depend on contractors who profit by cutting them. Gupta also reports a gap on manual scavenging. Citing the 2013 report of Parliament’s standing committee on social justice, she writes that handling human excreta “is not considered an offense if the excreta is fully decomposed”. Cleaning workers have asked for safeguards because they often have to remove excreta that is not (p. 250).

The broom also has a long history. Gupta cites Asang Wankhede’s account that under Peshwa rule in Maharashtra, “untouchables” were made to tie brooms behind their backs to sweep away their own footprints (p. 241). The study shows that history continuing in a modern public space.

What the study does not show

• Scale. Two stations and 20 people cannot tell us how common these conditions are across Indian Railways.
• Caste by shift. The railways did not release the caste or religion of workers by shift (p. 243), so the caste make-up comes from interviews.
• Change since 2019. Contracts, wages and rules may have changed.
• The theory is debated. Other scholars argue over whether racial capitalism, built from European and Atlantic history, fits caste. Jens Lerche, for one, cites this study while arguing that Cedric Robinson’s original version of the idea does not fit India well.

The station is clean because Dalit women make it so. The question Gupta leaves is why the policy that relies on them does not name them.

Talking points

• If cleaning were done with machines everywhere, would caste leave the job, or would the workers simply be fewer and still Dalit?
• Should outsourced workers’ wages and benefits be the railways’ legal responsibility, not only the contractor’s?
• A counter-view: the conditions Gupta describes, such as late pay and no union, are common in outsourced work everywhere. What in the study shows that caste, and not only contracting, explains them?

The study

Pallavi Gupta, “Broomscapes: racial capitalism, waste, and caste in Indian Railway Stations”, Ethnic and Racial Studies 45(2), 2022, pp. 235–256. doi:10.1080/01419870.2021.1964557