Singapore

We live in bewildering times.

War is raging in the heart of Europe, with the senseless fighting expected to make for a long, hard winter.

Food and fuel prices have spiralled as a result, portending hunger and hardship, not least for vulnerable communities far flung from the conflict.

Rising tensions in East Asia, amid the rivalry between the United States and China, make Taiwan a tinderbox that could flare up into a major confrontation that no one wants, nor may be able to control once set off.

Against this backdrop, the welter of reports on extreme weather – sweeping floods, roaring fires and devastating droughts – across the world, raise alarms that the climate crisis is getting harder to address by the day.

Little wonder that audiences say they are exhausted by the news. People are anxious about present developments and where they might be heading.

Fake news and misinformation add to the malaise. Some of this is spread deliberately, to sway public opinion, but much is also shared innocently, even unthinkingly, on social media platforms. Yet, curbs to check the former could constrain legitimate interaction.

At times like these, World News Day, which we mark today, is of added significance. Today, we reflect on how journalism can make a difference, and why it is so important that it does. 

Journalists in professional newsrooms have a vital role to play in safeguarding the well-being of the communities they serve. Our democracies depend on them doing so, effectively and purposefully.

How best to do so?

To my mind, we need to focus on delivering information, insight and inspiration.

Credible information – fact-based, reliable, and timely – remains vital if we are to have reasoned, and reasonable, debates on how to tackle the challenges we face and figure out the ways forward.  While we might all be entitled to our opinions, we are not entitled to our own facts. Without any agreement on even basic facts, democratic discussions are reduced to a cacophony of assertion, where “the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity”, as Yeats put it.

Fact-based journalism requires painstaking legwork by reporters, relentless cross-checking and quality control by editors, as well as authoritative analysis and interpretation by seasoned commentators. 

Not surprisingly, in this age of bewilderment, audiences are seeking out trusted voices, whom they can rely on to deliver reliable reports and insightful commentaries. Multiple studies show that apart from the news, audiences value explainers, backgrounders, analysis – whether online, on video or through newsletters.

Beyond this, faced with relentless waves of doom and gloom, people also want inspiration. They want to hear about possible solutions to the problems at hand, as well as of those who are stepping up to address them. So too content that seeks to shine a light in dark corners, and give voice to communities and subjects that are more often neglected or ignored.

Allow me to cite one example: a video series, titled ‘Invisible Asia’, in which my colleagues from The Straits Times cast a spotlight on people living in the shadows of their societies, largely unseen and unheard.

These include the ostracized burakumin or ‘untouchables’ in Japan, to the hardships endured by sewer cleaners in modern-day India and China’s silent army of odd-job migrant labourers, as well as the sense of isolation faced by unsuspecting brides drawn from abroad to marry men in Singapore.    

The series was awarded the top prize for investigative/enterprise video journalism at the global Editor & Publisher EPPY Awards 2021.

Many more examples of how journalism has made an impact can be found on the World News Day website. The old newsroom adage, “show, don’t tell”, applies here.

At a time when Orwellian “War-is-Peace”, Freedom-is-slavery” doublespeak and state-sponsored misinformation campaigns are rampant, it seems fitting to turn to that  journalistic sage, George Orwell, for inspiration on World News Day.

In his 1946 essay, Why I Write, Orwell argued that all writing, but perhaps especially journalistic endeavours, has a political purpose, as well as a quest for telling a good story well.

His words ring true today. He wrote: “My starting point is always a feeling of partisanship, a sense of injustice.

“When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, ‘I am going to produce a work of art’. I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing.

“But I could not do the work of writing a book, or even a long magazine article, if it were not also an aesthetic experience… I am not able, and do not want, completely to abandon the world view that I acquired in childhood. So long as I remain alive and well I shall continue to feel strongly about prose style… 

“The job is to reconcile my ingrained likes and dislikes with the essentially public, non-individual activities that this age forces on all of us.”

So it was, and so it remains, especially today.

About the author

Warren Fernandez is President of the World Editors Forum, a network of editors under the World Association of News Publishers, and also Editor-in-Chief of The Straits Times in Singapore.

To mark World News Day on September 28, 2022, the World News Day campaign is sharing stories that have had a significant social impact. This particular story, which was shared by The Straits Times (Singapore) and was first published on March 8, 2021.

Two foreigners wed to Singaporean men share their struggles and breakthroughs as they made a new life in the city state.

SINGAPORE – Siti’s husband, an odd-job worker 10 years her senior, did not allow her to leave the house without him – not even to do marketing.

Her husband also did not allow her to work and she was not given an allowance, though he paid for the bills at home.

Siti (not her real name), now 38, met her husband while working as a hotel receptionist in Indonesia, where he was holidaying.

They got engaged after a long-distance relationship of three months.

“I married him as he was very sincere in wanting to marry me,” she said.

However, life in Singapore in the early years had been mostly housebound for her. She stayed home to raise their four children, the oldest of whom is now 14.

“I felt he was afraid of me making new friends and I felt very alone.”

She said she did not go into marriage thinking that a Singaporean man would be her ticket to a better life, but she certainly did not expect the chagrin of having to ask him for money for even the smallest things.

“I felt like a child,” she said.

“Once I asked him for $5 to buy chilli for cooking, and he said he had no money. I was angry that he had money to buy 4D, but said he had no money to buy chilli.”

Siti is not alone in her marital woes.

There are many foreign women, wed to low-income Singaporean men, who face problems ranging from family violence to poverty as well as an uncertain stay in Singapore.

These women remain “invisible and voiceless” largely due to their immigration status, as they have limited rights, protection and access to social benefits, said Ms Shailey Hingorani, head of research and advocacy at the Association of Women for Action and Research (Aware).

She added: “Many lack knowledge of the rights and benefits that they are entitled to and are left feeling helpless in times of need as they do not know where to seek support for various challenges. This is compounded by the limited social networks they have in Singapore.”

Lowest family income, highest level of conflict

In 2019, 4,426 Singaporean men wed non-resident brides – making up one in five marriages involving at least one citizen, according to the Government’s Population In Brief 2020 report.

A recent landmark study on cross-national families by Professor Jean Yeung, founding director of the Centre for Family and Population Research at the National University of Singapore, and PhD student Shuya Lu, shed light on these families.

In 2018 and 2019, the researchers interviewed 3,121 women who were the primary caregivers of Singaporean children aged up to six years old.

It found that 18 per cent of these families had a wife born overseas and a Singapore-born husband, and 57 per cent had both parents born here.

The other families are those with a Singapore-born mum and a foreign-born dad and families with both parents born overseas.

The top five countries the foreign-born wives in the study are born in are China (26 per cent), Malaysia (25 per cent), Vietnam (14 per cent), Indonesia (11 per cent) and the Philippines (7 per cent).

The study also found that the level of family conflict is inversely related to family income.

The pressures of making ends meet often stress a marriage, and families with a foreign-born wife and a Singapore-born husband had the highest level of family conflict.

Social workers say Prof Yeung’s study confirms what they have been observing on the ground for years: that many of the Singaporean men who marry foreign wives are older, less educated and are low-wage workers.

And given the financial, legal and other challenges many of these women face, the study confirms the vulnerability of these foreign wives, they say.

Shaky foundation to marriage

Foreign women married to low-income Singapore men are particularly vulnerable to family violence and marital woes, social workers note.

Women interviewed for this story said their marriages were not arranged by matchmaking or “mail-order bride” agencies.

The couples had met instead through friends, social media, or while the Singaporean was holidaying or working in their country.

One reason these marriages are particularly vulnerable is that the couples tied the knot after a brief courtship and do not know each other well.

Sister Sylvia Ng, case manager at the Archdiocesan Commission for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People, said some of these couples had “shaky foundations” to their marriages.

They may have met only a few times before saying I do or they may not even share a common language, she said.

Ms Amanda Chong, whose research study on migrant brides was published in the Harvard Journal of Law and Gender in 2014, said that many of these women she interviewed told her they wed a Singaporean as an “economic strategy”.

Ms Chong, who co-founded Readable, a volunteer group that teaches children from disadvantaged families literacy and numeracy, added: “They feel that Singaporean men can provide for them and their children will have more opportunities here than in their own countries.”

The women often depend on their husbands to support them financially and to sponsor their long-term visit pass (LTVP), she added.

So some choose to stay in abusive or strained marriages, as they fear being separated from their children should their husbands cancel their LTVP if they ask for a divorce, social workers say.

Siti is a case in point.

The LTVP holder had once considered divorce, but banished the thought for fear of never seeing her children again.

“So I just tolerated everything,” she said, adding that her relationship with her husband has improved over time.

The Immigration and Checkpoints Authority, however, has said that Singaporeans cannot unilaterally cancel their foreign spouse’s LTVP or long-term visit pass-plus (LTVP+) without their spouse’s consent – a fact which social workers say many foreign wives may not know.

Measures to help

Of course, there are many happy marriages between Singaporean men and their foreign wives.

And in the past decade, the Government has put in place policies and programmes to help foreign brides and their families.

For one thing, it is now easier for LTVP and LTVP+ holders to work here. Since December 2018, they do not need their employers to apply for a letter of consent for them to work and they are granted such pre-approved letters.

With these pre-approved letters of consent, their bosses just need to notify the Manpower Ministry when they start work.

Foreign spouses holding a LTVP or LTVP+ are not subject to foreign worker quotas or levies, which boosts their employability, said those interviewed.

Sister Sylvia said: “This is a great development as it allows foreign wives to be employed and contribute financially to their family.”

The Government has also improved the accessibility and affordability of HDB flats for transnational families, a Ministry of Social and Family Development (MSF) spokesman said.

For example, since 2019, a citizen aged 21 and older marrying a non-resident spouse and applying for an HDB flat for the first time can apply for the Enhanced CPF Housing Grant (Singles) of up to $40,000 when buying a resale flat. Previously, the Singaporean had to be at least 35.

More can be done

Still, those interviewed say more can be done for this vulnerable group of foreign wives.

For example, Kreta Ayer Family Services social worker Tan Ee Hiang said more healthcare subsidies can be extended to foreign wives holding a LTVP.

Aware’s Ms Hingorani said: “There should be clear and timed access to permanent residency and citizenship for migrant spouses, so as to secure more rights for this group of people who have committed themselves to being part of the Singaporean community.”

The MSF spokesman said that Singapore does not automatically grant immigration passes such as LTVP and LTVP+ to all foreign spouses, and it assesses each application on its individual merits.

The MSF spokesman said: “Our immigration policies must strike a balance between facilitating marriage and parenthood, and safeguarding against marriages of convenience that aim to circumvent our immigration framework.

“The family must also be able to support itself financially, and the marriage must be stable, among other considerations.”

For Siti, her life here became brighter after she took up a cleaner’s job – going against her husband’s wishes, she said.

He was angry at first but relented and allowed her to work as her over $1,000 monthly pay also paid for some of the children’s expenses.

She also has made more friends through work and says she now knows how to seek help from social workers if she needs it.

She said: “I’m happy I earn my own money, as I can spend it on myself and my children. And I have saved some money in case of an emergency.

“I have made more friends.”

‘I feel so blessed’

SINGAPORE – What should have been the honeymoon period of her marriage was instead eclipsed by homesickness.

Ms Khuong Thi Van, who moved to Singapore after marrying a Singaporean three years ago, missed her parents, who run a vegetable wholesale business, and her two younger brothers back in Vietnam.

The 24-year-old Vietnamese, who goes by the name Anna Ng, also missed Vietnamese food and had no friends here.

The high school graduate who speaks English said: “I felt very lonely during my first year here. I cried a lot and felt very lost.”

But her “buddy”, whom she met while attending a marriage support programme for transnational couples like her, was a lifeline.

The Vietnamese woman introduced her to other Vietnamese wives and showed her around. Mrs Ng also made more friends through the church she attends.

Mrs Ng met her 25-year-old husband Ng Bon Han, a sales engineer, through friends. During their year-long courtship, he often visited her in Vietnam.

“I feel I can relate to him,” said Mrs Ng, who is not working. “And he cares a lot about me.”

Their first year of married life was the hardest as they had to adjust to being man and wife.

For example, she initially wanted to have children immediately, as couples in Vietnam usually do, but he wanted to save up first.

They now plan to have children in five or 10 years’ time, as they believe it is costly to raise children here.

She said: “Even though we love each other, we still have differences. So we communicated a lot more to understand each other. Now our marriage is very stable.”

Other marriages on the rocks

However, a few of her Vietnamese friends’ marriages to Singaporeans are on the rocks.

Some wed Singaporean men in the hope of leading a better life here, after a courtship of as short as a month and without getting to really know their spouses before saying “I do”, she said.

One or two friends wed a Singaporean twice their age, and the couple have different sets of values and expectations about marriage, Mrs Ng added.

“I always tell my friends, marry the one you love and it doesn’t matter where he comes from. But many still feel marrying a Singaporean is a dream,” she said.

To help transnational couples start their marriage on a “strong foundation”, the Ministry of Social and Family Development (MSF) introduced a marriage preparation programme (MPP) and the marriage support programme (MSP) in 2014.

The programmes cover communication and conflict management in a cross-cultural context, and offer practical advice on living in Singapore, said an MSF spokesman.

The MPP is a half-day programme, while the MSP is a full-day programme, said Ms Isabelle Ng, social worker at Fei Yue Community Services, which runs the programmes.

Fei Yue also organises classes to teach the foreign spouse basic conversational English or Mandarin, organises outings and matches a buddy to those who want one.

Ms Ng said: “Due to cultural and language gaps, the marital difficulties faced can be magnified. So the buddy is a source of emotional and practical support for the foreign wife.”

After a review of the programmes in 2019, the MSF revised the content to focus more on managing cultural differences as well as relationship skills, such as communication skills and conflict resolution, among other things.

Mrs Ng is now a buddy to two Vietnamese women, as she found the marriage programmes run by Fei Yue helpful.

She said: “My buddy did a good job for me and now I can help others. I have more friends now and feel less stressed now. I feel blessed.”

To mark World News Day on September 28, 2022, the World News Day campaign is sharing stories that have had a significant social impact. This particular story, which was shared by The Straits Times (Singapore) and was first published on March 8, 2021.

A Chinese migrant worker’s wearied hope of escaping the endless cycle of seeking day-to-day odd jobs to get by.

BEIJING – On some days, migrant worker Wei Xiaoqiang collapses into bed after getting home from work and falls asleep with his shoes still on, the day’s grime still on his face.

“I just wrap myself in a blanket and go to sleep,” said the 43-year-old from China’s northern Jilin province.

His reality now is a long way from the big dreams he left behind: As a boy, he aspired to be a journalist or a designer.

Mr Wei came to Beijing about half a year ago to find work, and has sorted parcels, loaded and driven logistics trucks, and worked in construction sites and factories.

There have been winter days when he worked until his perspiration hung like “frost on his jacket”.

When Mr Wei spoke to The Straits Times, he was working in a car factory where he was responsible for moving parts between different areas.

It is menial work, and like many of the migrant workers who end up in the Chinese capital, he finds these jobs at the Majuqiao labour market on the outskirts of the city.

There, employment agencies and recruiters line the street, shouting out job offerings or advertising them through posters, offering work that pays anywhere from 160 yuan (S$33) to 320 yuan a day.

These jobs are odd bits and bobs that the city requires to function – from sorting and loading parcels during China’s e-commerce festivals, to positions for temporary security guards and cleaners during the Chinese New Year holiday when many migrants go home.

The work is often informal and uncontracted, which experts say leaves these workers vulnerable to being exploited.

While there are no official figures on how many of China’s over 290 million rural migrants work under such conditions, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said last week that there are 200 million Chinese workers under flexible employment.

Experts say a growing number are being drawn into informal work like these as they move to the cities seeking a better life.

These workers, mostly men between the ages of 20 and 40, fall above China’s poverty line – and so might not qualify for support under China’s anti-poverty drive – but unlike migrants with stable work, they live a hardscrabble life, seeking new jobs by the day to stay afloat.

‘That’s just my life now’

Some workers say they enjoy the freedom of not being tied to fixed working arrangements. Others like Mr Wei confess they simply cannot find any other work.

“I want to do something different, maybe be a supervisor in some company. Who wants to do work like this? But I don’t have the qualifications, so these are all empty dreams,” he told The Straits Times.

In Majuqiao, he looks out for work that pays about 200 yuan a day. There are higher-paying jobs but those are more physically demanding, he says. A typical workday is between eight and 12 hours long.

“If I were to do jobs that pay 320 yuan a day, the next day I would have to rest – I wouldn’t be able to get out of bed,” he said.

“Bosses think that since they are paying more, they want us to work harder… If we can’t keep up, they might withhold our pay.

“Sometimes, when I return home from work, I am just so tired. Not just physically tired, but also in my heart.”

Some employers would scold workers for drinking too much water and needing to use the toilet, and some would withhold wages if workers did not perform up to their expectations, he said.

Working five to six days a week, Mr Wei makes about 5,000 yuan a month – more than the 1,500 yuan he would have made back home doing the same odd jobs.

“It’s a lonely – incredibly lonely – lifestyle. In Beijing, you have no one to rely on. Your friends are always busy. We all go out early and come home late. We don’t get to meet. It’s a very lonely life,” said Mr Wei.

“I am getting older… Most people my age should strive to have a stable income and stop living such an uncertain life… I can only live by the day and hope my luck stays good.”

His home city of Liaoyuan used to be a coal-producing hub before the mines were depleted in the 1990s.

He dropped out of middle school to work and for almost 20 years, has been labouring in cities across China.

Bottom of the food chain

In Beijing, Majuqiao is a magnet for migrants from China’s north-east provinces like Mr Wei.

Such job markets are present in most cities – like the Sanhe job market in the manufacturing hub of Shenzhen, which made headlines a few years ago for gig workers there who lived a subsistence lifestyle romanticised as “work for one day and party for three”.

Mr Geoffrey Crothall, a spokesman for Hong Kong-based labour rights group China Labour Bulletin, said: “This casualisation of labour and the precarious nature of this labour, it’s not just an issue confined to major cities, it’s an issue you find in cities across the country.”

He added that these workers are not protected by legal contracts and live at risk of wage arrears. Their employers also do not make social security contributions for them, and they are unlikely to be covered by accident insurance.

“If they are working as day labourers, then they are very much at the bottom of the food chain.”

This trend towards short-term employment was flagged as early as 2012 in a Tsinghua University study that highlighted how a new generation of migrant workers were changing jobs more frequently, attributing it partly to poor pay and work conditions.

The proportion of rural migrant workers employed under formal contracts has also declined over the years, from 42.8 per cent in 2009 to 35.1 per cent in 2016 – the latest year that the National Bureau of Statistics released figures on this.

Upgrading prospects of rural youth

The plight of Mr Wei and other workers like him often goes unseen, but experts say it highlights a keen crisis that China faces – where millions of unskilled workers have flocked to cities for work as rural conditions decline, but find themselves able to do only the most basic work.

Unequipped to tap the opportunities offered in these urban areas, these mostly male workers remain trapped on the bottom rungs of the social ladder.

Mr Huang Tianlei, a research fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, pointed out that this structural mismatch is expected to accelerate – demand for low-skilled labour will fall as a result of automation and other reasons, and structural unemployment could increase in future.

“The migrant workforce is extremely vulnerable to such crises as the pandemic, exactly because their skills do not allow them to adapt quickly,” said Mr Huang.

The central government recognises the scale of the problem and has made revitalising rural areas a key focus.

Beijing’s first policy document of the year, released last month, outlined the importance of developing rural industries so that rural workers can find work “close to, or wherever they are”, and improve the quality of rural education.

But it is an enormous challenge. The rural education system would have to be overhauled, said Mr Huang, adding that schools would have to teach rural students skills to be able to continuously learn to equip themselves to do future jobs.

“The rural youth will become the majority of China’s labour force tomorrow and, though improving, the education system is still not up to the task of educating this future labour force to be capable of adapting to the evolving demands of the labour market,” he said.

At the same time, Beijing will have to find ways to upgrade the skills of the hundreds of millions of workers like Mr Wei.

Failure to do that could lead to rising anger among workers who feel they have been left behind, which could lead to instability, said Mr Crothall.

Mr Wei, however, is not waiting for help to come his way. He recently bought a second-hand laptop and has been learning basic design skills online, to finally take a shot at his childhood dream.

Quoting a Chinese proverb, he said: “Even the murky Yellow River has days when it runs clear. My luck will eventually change.”

To mark World News Day on September 28, 2022, the World News Day campaign is sharing stories that have had a significant social impact. This particular story, which was shared by The Straits Times (Singapore) and was first published on March 8, 2021.

India’s sewer cleaners speak up on their caste-ridden occupation, outlawed but not eradicated.

BANGALORE – Mr Pedanna G had just put his feet up on the bed in his two-room house in Bangalore when his phone rang for the fourth time that Sunday.

“Another person with a blocked toilet,” he said, hopping off the bed and slipping on his khaki work shirt and mask. Even before he had reached the end of the street, his phone rang again. It was the same person, confirming if Mr Pedanna was on his way. Could he hurry please? Could he take an autorickshaw instead of the bus?

“Rich people panic when their loo is overflowing. That is when they need me the most,” said Mr Pedanna, 55.

The man on the phone called Mr Pedanna “anna” (older brother), but after 20 years of cleaning toilets, drains and manholes, he knew that it was lip service.

As soon as clean water began to gush through the pipes and the customer was flooded with relief, their hierarchies would snap back in place.

“I just hope he gives me fair wages,” Mr Pedanna said, hailing a tuk-tuk, whose fare he hoped the customer would pay. He usually charges 1,000 rupees (S$18.30) per cleaning job, but without fixed wages, payments are always uncertain for freelance workers like him.

A caste-ridden curse

Mr Pedanna is what India calls a manual scavenger.

In cities and villages, it is common to see men and women cleaning latrines and sewers using brooms, sticks and, often, bare hands. These workers manually carry and dispose of human excreta from streets, gutters and septic tanks in homes, offices and hospitals. Some enter manholes with sewage water up to their necks to unclog pipes.

The work remains essential due to the country’s inadequate sewerage system and lack of home toilets, which leads to open defecation.

In rural India and slums, a third of the people relieve themselves in the streets and open fields.

Even in urban areas, only 30 per cent of households have toilets connected to waterborne sewer systems. Common latrines are often little more than holes in the ground, and when they get full, someone is needed to clear them out. Where it exists, the sewerage system is often old and easily clogged.

Some cities such as Bangalore have mechanised systems to fix major blockages, and corporations are banned from using manual cleaners.

But in old or rapidly growing neighbourhoods without proper drainage systems, people still call for someone to put their hand into faecal sludge or jump into a sewer to manually unclog it.

Unless poor, most Indians tend to employ someone else to clean their toilets and, by extension, their sewers. In a caste-ridden society, this work was often forced upon a sub-group of Dalits, a marginalised community of former untouchables.

To repair centuries of oppression, India today penalises such caste discrimination and has a system of affirmative action. The present Indian president is a Dalit man.

But to this day, Dalits in the country remain poor and shunned by society. The most oppressed groups among them are forced to clean sewers.

The work is disgusting – and dangerous.

In the past five years to December last year, 340 people have died from inhaling noxious fumes or slipping in manholes.

Thousands of others such as Mr Pedanna have had wounds and cuts all over their hands and legs, chronic aches and breathing difficulties. Unlike sanitation workers, they get no equipment or protective gear.

“But what hurts most of all is the humiliation we are subjected to,” said Mr Pedanna.

It is not uncommon for people to abuse or beat him up. As he waited for a cup of tea at a small shop, the store owner kept a wide distance and put the water jug away to prevent him from drinking from it.

“People hurl insults at my caste. When I take the bus, some don’t let me sit. Maybe I stink. Some won’t give me water to drink or wash my hands. Frankly, it is very painful. I keep a smiling face but at the end of the day, I feel depressed,” Mr Pedanna said.

“Why am I stuck doing this job?”

Forced underground

Manual scavenging is perhaps modern India’s greatest shame. Recognised as a form of slavery, it was outlawed in 1993. Since then, it has been illegal for anyone to employ manual scavengers.

Still, thousands continue to manually clear sewers and toilets due to their poverty and place in the caste hierarchy.

Officially, their numbers have dropped from 770,338 in 2008 to about 48,000 in January last year. But activists say this is a gross under-assessment, and put the number closer to around 1.2 million. The Socio-Economic Caste Census of 2011 has also identified 182,505 Indian households with the primary occupation of manual scavenging.

Incomplete and half-hearted surveys seek to make an already invisible community disappear from the records, said Mr Bezwada Wilson, one of the founders of the Safai Karmachari Andolan, a nationwide movement to eradicate manual scavenging.

A November 2019 report by the World Health Organisation found that the Indian government’s attempts to show fewer Indians engaged in this dehumanising work had only driven manual scavenging underground.

Ms Vani Nagendrappa, managing director of a company the Karnataka state government formed in 2016 to offer loans and support to sanitation workers to shift to other jobs, said: “We do public awareness campaigns to inform citizens that if they employ manual cleaners for their homes, they will be jailed. But they continue to call them out of ignorance and habit, and the workers continue to go.

“We need citizens to report where it is happening for us to be able to stop it,” she said.

Dignity neither in life nor death

The workers’ lack of bargaining power, illiteracy, social vulnerability and poverty, combined with weak legal oversight, have led to the worst, riskiest sanitation jobs such as sewer cleaning being subcontracted to temporary, informal workers.

Manual scavengers working independently under the radar have no protections or safety nets.

Mr Narayanswamy Muniappa, a 66-year-old sewer cleaner, lost his 25-year-old son to the same job two decades ago.

“The municipality contractor had forced my son to enter a manhole. He felt faint due to the gases and fell. He drowned in the sewage before his partner pulled him out,” said Mr Narayanswamy, who cannot forget the black sludge oozing from his son’s nostrils throughout the funeral.

Accidents from losing consciousness and death by asphyxiation in septic tanks and sewers, pit collapse or falling masonry and wounds from sharp debris are shockingly frequent.

If a worker dies while performing such work, even with safety gear and other precautions, the police are required to investigate the case and get the employer to pay a million rupees to the family.

Mr Narayanswamy tried to collect the compensation, but the municipality asked for proof that his son was indeed hired for pit cleaning by the said employer. The municipality claimed the young man had died because he was drunk.

“I didn’t have the energy, money or time to fight it,” said Mr Narayanswamy. Since that day, however, he has kept a notebook with a neat list of names and addresses of people who call him for work. “If the police ask me for proof that I do this work, I will show them this,” he said.

He also quit drinking, a harder decision for pit cleaners than most can imagine.

Mr Munisamy Katappa, a 70-year-old worker in Mr Narayanswamy’s neighbourhood, said: “I drink so that I can endure the horrid stink of excrement, and the disgust and humiliation I feel.”

He nursed a swollen hand that had been cut by a piece of glass in a toilet chamber some weeks ago.

Many like him also work at night to avoid neighbours’ objections or ugly abuses.

These common practices exacerbate the risk of accidents.

In 2019 alone, even as India expanded a nationwide Clean India Mission to end open defecation, build toilets for homes in poor areas and mechanise sewage cleaning, 110 people died while cleaning sewers and septic tanks.

In the past decade, the average toll has been one or two each week killed by toxic fumes and accidents in slippery manholes.

Despite stringent provisions, few police complaints are filed when a manual scavenger dies, and employers who illegally force workers to climb into sewers often go scot-free.

“If employers force us to work without safety gear or go inside a manhole, we are helpless,” Mr Munisamy said.

Hard to break out

India introduced rehabilitation packages and skills training workshops in 2013 to manual scavengers who wanted to quit – one-time cash assistance of 40,000 rupees and loans of up to 1.5 million rupees at low interest. Last year, the Indian government also launched the Safaimitra Suraksha Challenge, which aims to completely mechanise all septic and sewage tank cleaning operations in 243 cities across India by the end of this month.

But these policies have had little impact on the ground.

“The government gives the families of the manual scavengers 1 million rupees if they die at work, but what use is that? For them and their children to survive, the government should give them 5 million rupees and a decent job,” said Mrs Shakuntalamma, a social worker with the Safai Karamchari Kavalu Samiti, a committee that monitors manual scavenging in Karnataka.

“If the workers are illiterate, at least give jobs and a loan to their children. That would bring real change. Instead, we see no rehabilitation, and every day, people die in the sewers.”

Of the 87,913 manual scavengers identified in a 2018 survey in 14 towns, for instance, only 27,268 received any form of help from the Social Justice Ministry in charge of the rehabilitation programme. Activists say the programme is made redundant by too much bureaucracy and corruption.

At a union meeting in February in Bangalore, dozens of experienced sanitation workers who qualified for the state rehabilitation package said they had found the paperwork daunting.

Ms Nagendrappa said manual scavenging is largely fuelled by individuals and private businesses, and that the government uses only mechanised cleaning equipment. But the sanitation workers said the government cannot absolve itself of responsibility.

They asked why they were not included in the nationwide shift to mechanised sewer cleaning.

“The sewage department trained us one year ago to operate the jet-cleaner, but when residents call them for a cleaning, they rarely take us along. Private contractors who own the machines employ their own set of workers,” explained one worker.

Hopes for the next generation

It is no surprise that many manual scavengers pin all their hopes on their children.

“My kids and grandchildren should be educated so they get other job opportunities. That is my wish,” said Mr Munisamy.

His granddaughter Chandana, 17, said she wants to become a lawyer, if only “to shame all the people who call us names, close their nose when we pass by and don’t think of us as humans”.

“First, people left my grandfather no option but to clean their excrement, and then they said they won’t touch us because we are dirty,” she said. “We all have the same blood, eat the same food. I wish people would see human ability, and not box us in by caste.”

Mr Pedanna’s son Ravindra Kumar, 26, holds a bachelor’s degree in commerce, but found work only as a part-time garbage collector for the municipality.

“Once new employers know what caste we belong to, they refuse to give us anything other than sanitation work. But I want manual scavenging to end with my father. I will never do it,” he said.

After five jobs that Sunday, Mr Pedanna vigorously washed his hands and legs, and sat down.

As Mr Ravindra massaged his father’s calves with medicated oil, he said: “As a boy, I was ashamed to tell people that my father is a sewer cleaner. But now I know that he is actually a public servant, like a doctor or a policeman. I just wish people would respect him.”

To mark World News Day on September 28, 2022, the World News Day campaign is sharing stories that have had a significant social impact. This particular story, which was shared by The Straits Times (Singapore) and was first published on March 8, 2021.

Japan’s ‘untouchables’ – descendants of a shunned caste from a long-gone era – are still ostracised in modern times purely because of their lineage.

TOKYO/NIKKO (TOCHIGI) – “Growing up, I was embarrassed by myself, by my family and by my living conditions.

“I was embarrassed by my grandmother, who could not read and write because she did not go to school. I was embarrassed by the jobs held by my neighbours. I was embarrassed by how my house was very small, rundown and shabby.

“I kept wanting to escape this life.”

Professor Risa Kumamoto, 48, has indeed come a long way from her childhood home – a hamlet of shunned “untouchables” – and escaped the grips of oppressive poverty and outright discrimination.

 

While no longer shackled by these visible identifiers, the burakumin were, for generations, stuck in lowly paid jobs, with poor educational opportunities and living in rundown housing.

Prof Kumamoto recalled never inviting friends home. On the way home together with her schoolmates, she would alight several bus stops away from her hamlet and walk the rest of the way home. “I just didn’t want them to know that I am burakumin.”

The pain of being burakumin hit home early in life for her. She was six when her parents’ marriage crumbled under social pressure.

“My mother was from a burakumin family in Fukuoka. My father wasn’t. There was huge opposition from my father’s family when they got married. After that, as husband and wife, they were looked down upon. Many things added up over time, leading up to divorce.”

The split made her acutely conscious of being burakumin, even as she and her mother continued living in the hamlet in Fukuoka. Thanks to government policies to help burakumin, she was able to get an education, but her ancestry continued to dog her.

Prof Kumamoto vividly remembers how, in university, her then boyfriend told her to hide her identity. “He told me, ‘You are a good person, but it is better not to mention your burakumin background to my family for your own good. This isn’t discrimination, but mentioning it draws unnecessary attention to it, so it is just better not to talk about it at all.’”

 

Hiding in plain sight

While buraku hamlets have been torn down in areas around and north of Tokyo, they still exist, albeit with facilities modernised and gates torn down, in western Japan areas such as Osaka and Kyoto.

Available official figures, from 1993, indicate that 4,442 such communities existed nationwide.

Today, the Japanese government recognises only those who still live in those hamlets as burakumin – about 900,000, by official estimates.

The Buraku Liberation League (BLL), however, said the actual number is closer to three million.

Many have long moved out of those hamlets and sought jobs without the stigma of what their forefathers had to do.

While most burakumin are no longer recognisable by their jobs or their addresses, prejudice against them manifests in both overt and covert forms.

They have been sent death threats, had their homes vandalised with obscene graffiti or been called names like “scum” and “maggots” on social media. There have also been cases where burakumin were purportedly targeted as convenient scapegoats for crimes without any evidence.

Mr Taro Murasaki, 59, who runs the Osaru Land theme park in Nikko, north of Tokyo, followed in his father’s footsteps as a monkey trainer – one of the so-called “unclean” trades associated with burakumin.

He said people sometimes still refer to him derogatorily as “aiitsu” – or “that person” – presumably because of his caste and profession.

In less-overt cases, burakumin can be bypassed for promotions at work, shunned by their associates or excluded from gatherings with friends. They may also be subject to background checks in employment or marriage.

Family registers kept at town halls could be accessed freely until just decades ago, while old documents with names and addresses of burakumin continue to be circulated on the black market.

Many burakumin will remember how the late former chief Cabinet secretary Hiromu Nonaka was blocked from becoming prime minister when political elite Taro Aso, who is now finance minister, said in 2001: “Are we really going to let ‘those people’ become the leader of Japan?”

BLL vice-chairman Akiyuki Kataoka, 72, told ST that many burakumin conceal their lineage to avoid societal discrimination. It is also common, he added, for many to have chosen not to tell their children of their ancestry in order to protect them.

A special law was passed in 1969 to provide public housing, public health and education facilities and scholarships for the burakumin, who had been routinely neglected for education, jobs and welfare benefits. Some 15 trillion yen (S$184 billion) was spent over 33 years until the law lapsed in 2002.

Preferential placement programmes also helped burakumin secure places in school and municipal jobs, helping their social mobility.

But sociologist Ryushi Uchida of Kansai University told The Straits Times that the law has been perceived as affirmative action by some and fuelled discrimination, while it has also been exploited by some burakumin with links to the yakuza mob. “There have been questions like: ‘Why do those people deserve special treatment?’”

Same case, different place

For Prof Kumamoto, her decision to come out as burakumin came about after she went to Canada to further her studies in the 1990s. Meeting indigenous peoples, immigrants and sexual minorities, she “saw how they had a history of fighting against discrimination”.

It was a huge turning point for her. “Instead of running away, discrimination must be confronted head-on,” she said.

“In the past, I ran away. I hid. I was disgusted by my lineage. But now, I see that my friends can look at society through me. And they can learn about history from my experiences.”

Still, “there is a difference between ‘choosing to come out’ and ‘being outed’ ”, she said, using terms regularly used by the LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer) community – terms also often used by the burakumin in Japan.

The fact is, efforts to ferret out the burakumin still persist, often in the name of academic research and freedom of speech.

Some 248 persons of burakumin lineage – some of them professors and some others businessmen – have brought a class-action lawsuit against publisher Tatsuhiko Miyabe, 42, for disseminating their names and addresses online. A verdict is due in September.

One of the plaintiffs is Mrs Tami Kamikawa, 41. Her parents were born in buraku communities in Mie and Osaka prefecture, and had met after moving to Tokyo as young adults in the hope of more favourable prospects.

They would have hoped for their daughter to not live through discrimination for being burakumin, but Mrs Kamikawa, who founded non-profit group Buraku Heritage in 2011 to counter the spread of hatred, said hate speech is still disseminated online.

She, too, has struggled with micro aggression in the form of people who deny the struggles of her lineage.

She recalled being upfront about her identity and the struggles her family had faced to her friends and teachers in school. She only learnt about the existence of her aunt in secondary school, after her father told her that she had severed all ties with the family as a condition for marriage – to prepare her for the types of discrimination she may face.

She raised this with her teacher in school, but was plainly accused of exaggerating her concerns.

She recalled being told: “Such buraku prejudice is a historical issue. You must be lying if you say this still exists.”

Mrs Kamikawa told ST: “There are a lot of pent-up feelings from when I have been told to stop imagining things.”

She has not, however, been imagining things.

A government survey in 2017 found that just 11.8 per cent of Japanese believe burakumin discrimination no longer exists, with 40.1 per cent seeing such prejudice in marriage and 23.5 per cent in jobs.

Another, by the Tokyo metropolitan government in 2014, found that 26.6 per cent would oppose their children marrying someone of burakumin lineage.

When it is not just free speech

Led by the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), the Diet passed an Act in 2016 to “promote the elimination of buraku discrimination”.

The law recognises “the fact that buraku discrimination still exists even today and that the situation has evolved with the increasing use of the Internet”, and seeks to “improve the understanding of each and every citizen on the need to eliminate buraku discrimination”.

It does not, however, impose any punitive measures, and lawmaker Tsuyoshi Yamaguchi, 66, who heads the LDP’s sub-committee on buraku issues, acknowledged that the law is “not forceful enough”.

“There is still discrimination when burakumin are getting married or finding jobs. We need to hasten our efforts for more effective laws,” the six-term lawmaker, whose ward in Hyogo prefecture is home to many buraku industries like leather production, told ST.

Mr Yamaguchi, who is not of buraku lineage, added that even the passage of the watered-down law was problematic.

“The idea of including prohibitive clauses was contentious in the LDP, especially among the more conservative and in the face of the ‘freedom of speech’ counter argument,” he said.

“The law only came into being because (secretary-general Toshihiro) Nikai was driving it. Even (then Prime Minister Shinzo) Abe used to oppose it.”

Asked if Japan was ready for a prime minister of buraku heritage, Mr Yamaguchi told ST: “If one’s great-great-great-grandparent lived in a buraku community, who cares?”

Some municipalities have been more progressive in terms of anti-prejudice ordinances.

Kawasaki, to the south of Tokyo, which is home to a large zainichi (ethnic Korean) population, became the first municipality to ban hate speech last year. Last month, Mie prefecture became the first municipality in Japan to ban the outing of LGBTQ individuals.

For abattoir worker Yuki Miyazaki, this offers a ray of hope for eradicating discrimination against burakumin.

“This momentum must spread nationwide,” he told ST. “Some people defend discrimination as their right of free speech. But how can one person’s rights come at the expense of another’s?”

Mr Miyazaki, 38, who has been working at the Shibaura Meat Market in Tokyo for 20 years, wields a deft hand at preparing cuts of pricey wagyu beef. He has had slurs thrown his way because of his profession – even before he came out as burakumin.

“People can do anything they want to me, but if they attack my two children, I can’t always be there to protect them. I am cautious about revealing my identity because I need to keep them safe. This is a shame as I am proud of my roots and my work.”

Calling for more education at all levels of society, he said: “There is a school of thought that the problem will eventually wither up and disappear if people keep silent, with the idea of ‘not waking up a sleeping child’. I don’t think so. It is important to tell people accurately about history and reality, and have them face up to their own prejudices.”

In the spotlight

Mr Murasaki, the monkey theme park owner, recalled: “When I was young, I always had trouble meeting or dating girls. Once their families knew of my background, they always stopped their daughters from going out with me.”

He took on the job knowing full well that it would be a clear marker of his status as an “untouchable”.

In time, Mr Murasaki found fame appearing on television in his 20s, showing off his monkeys performing skits and playing football and table hockey.

Besides operating his theme park in the city of Nikko, north of Tokyo, since 2015, he and his simian troupe have also been invited to perform abroad.

Despite the insults that he sometimes encounters, he will not hide his lineage.

“With a rise in awareness in human rights and anti-discrimination movements, I want to be true to myself. Rather than hiding in the shadows, it is important to push society to realise there is no reason behind its prejudices,” he said.

“Isn’t it unbelievable that a democratic country like Japan is so stuck?”