The Union government on Tuesday (February 3, 2026) for the first time released data on the ongoing enumeration of waste-pickers across the country, showing that a total of 1.52 lakh such workers had been profiled and validated so far across urban areas of 35 States and Union Territories. At the national level, 84.5% of overall waste-pickers were from Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe, and Other Backward Class communities and 10.7% from General category communities.
At the State/UT level, there were some outliers, where waste-pickers from the General category constituted a significant majority. For instance, in Delhi and Goa, those from General category communities outnumbered those from SC, ST, and OBC communities put together. In West Bengal, General category workers constituted 42.4% of all those profiled and validated.
The Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment tabled the data in Parliament on Tuesday (February 3, 2026). The enumeration exercise is part of the Ministry’s NAMASTE scheme, which is enumerating sewer and septic tank workers and waste-pickers across the country, to have them formally recognised by urban local bodies and provide them with protective equipment. The scheme aims at eradicating deaths due to hazardous cleaning of sewers and septic tanks.
The data showed that a total of 1.52 lakh waste-pickers had been profiled and validated by urban local bodies as part of this exercise till January 23 this year. Of these, about 48.7% are women (74,427), 51.3% men (78,374), and 0.007% transgender people (12).
Category-wise population
Social category data showed that of the total workers profiled, 60.3% were from SC communities (92,089), 13.7% from OBC communities (20,954), and 10.5% from ST communities. It also said 16,329 waste-pickers (10.7%) were from communities classified under the General category.
In Delhi and Goa, however, the majority of waste-pickers were from the General category. In Delhi, 4,289 of more than 6,500 waste-pickers profiled were from that category, and the case was similar in Goa, where, of the total 1,286 workers profied, 729 were from General category communities.
Under the NAMASTE scheme, waste-pickers have been defined as people “informally” engaged in “collection and recovery of reusable and recyclable solid waste from streets, bins, material recovery facilities, processing and waste disposal facilities for sale to recyclers directly or through intermediaries to earn their livelihood”.
‘Other’ category
The data, tabled by Minister of State for Social Justice Ramdas Athawale, also said that 7,402 workers were from “Other” communities. The data was released in response to a question from Erode MP K.E. Prakash from the DMK on the NAMASTE scheme, which had recently included enumeration of waste-pickers in its objectives.
The scheme has so far enumerated about 89,000 sewer-entry workers and septic tank workers, 95.8% of them men. Parliament data from December 2024 showed that among the sewer and septic tank workers profiled till then, 91.95% were from SC, ST, and OBC backgrounds, while about 8.05% were from General category communities. However, State-level data of that time has not yet been made available.
859 dead since 2014
In response to a different question in Lok Sabha on Tuesday, the Social Justice Ministry said that a total of 859 people had died due to hazardous cleaning of sewers and septic tanks across the country since 2014, with 43 of these deaths occurring in 2025.
Under the component of sewer and septic tank workers, the scheme considers “workers directly associated with sewer and septic tank cleaning, including drivers of desludging vehicles, helpers, machine operators and cleaners”.
Published – February 03, 2026 08:23 pm IST
