The Big Necessity  Latrine Rights in India News and commentary
about environmental issues. Oct. 9 2008 7:06 AM  The Big
Necessity   Click here to launch a slide show on The Big
Necessity.  It drips on her head most days, says Champaben, but
in the monsoon season it's worse. In rain, worms multiply. Every
day, nonetheless, she gets up and walks to her owners' house,
and there she picks up their excrement with her bare hands or a
piece of tin, scrapes it into a basket, puts the basket on her
head or shoulders and carries it to the nearest waste dump. She
has no mask, no gloves, and no protection. She is paid a
pittance, if she is paid at all. She regularly gets dysentery,
giardiasis, brain fever. She does this because a 3,000-year-old
social hierarchy says she has to.  They used to be known as
bhangi, a word formed from the Sanskrit for "broken," and the
Hindi for "trash." Today, official India calls them the
"scheduled castes," but activists prefer Dalits, a word that
means "broken" or "oppressed" but with non