The Bombay High Court observed recently that while “we boast about reaching the other side of the Moon,” some are being made to do work “below human dignity” due to the “social evil of the caste system” that, it said, is still being followed in India. The high court made these observations while noting the deaths of sanitation workers engaged in manual scavenging.

The court also set aside a portion of the December 2019 and April 2025 Government Resolutions, saying they discriminated against sanitation workers employed with private establishments under private contractors by paying them lower compensation than those employed by the state government and its undertakings.

A bench of Justices Bharati H Dangre and Manjusha A Deshpande passed the ruling on August 13, as reported by , the detailed judgment of which was made available Thursday night.

Senior advocate Gayatri Singh, along with advocates Sudha Bharadwaj and Khalil Rehman appearing for Shramik Janata Sangh and others, argued that the state government must pay compensation to the five deceased workers’ kin as per the Supreme Court judgment in the Safai Karmachari Andolan case.

“We boast about reaching the other side of the Moon, yet the hard reality that stares us in the face is that the social evil of the caste system is still followed in our country, which forces some of our citizens to do work that is below human dignity. Though the Constitution guarantees all its citizens, equality before the law and equal protection of the law, even after 75 years of adopting the Constitution, our Country is not free from the social evil that has haunted us for ages,” Justice Deshpande noted.

Manual scavenging, the court added, “is one such practice, which is still followed in our country, which forces a particular class of society to undertake this inhumane practice for generations,” despite various Supreme Court rulings and laws prohibiting it.

The court also entitled the kin of five private sanitation workers who died while engaged in manual scavenging to Rs 30 lakh compensation from the state authorities and directed the government to identify all persons who died while doing such work within six months and provide Rs 30 lakh compensation to their dependents.

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“Pained to observe the instrumentalities of the state are making half-hearted attempts” to implement Supreme Court rulings, the HC noted, adding that it left sanitation workers “deprived of their legitimate claims for compensation and rehabilitation.”