India’s government sanitation workforce is nearly nine-tenths Dalit

Evidence

There is one government department in which Dalits are over-represented by a factor of six. Almost 90 per cent of those designated as sweepers—who clean streets, who go down manholes and service the sewage system, who clean toilets and do menial jobs—and employed by the Government of India are Dalits. (Even this sector is up for privatisation now, which means private companies will be able to subcontract jobs on a temporary basis to Dalits for less pay and with no guarantee of job security.) — Ambedkar, B R, Annihilation of Caste_ The Annotated…, 77

Categorization

• SEED: Follow-up reporting angle: caste-based occupational segregation persisting inside the Indian state itself — the state reproducing caste roles it forbids.
• XREF: Connects to the untouchability-sanitation link in Doobay and the observation that prohibitions follow the dirty-work boundary in all stratified societies.