Book based on real life story of scavengers will be released by the Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar on Monday at Balyogi Auditorium of the Parliament. Two books comprising real life stories of 56 liberated scavengers titled “New Princesses of Alwar” and its Hindi version,”Alwar Ki Nai Rajkumariyan” in a function.

The book is a collection of reports about the liberation of scavengers from the sub-human practice in Alwar and efforts made by Sulabh International in this regard. According to Vindeshwar Pathak, founder of Sulabh International “To relieve them from their sub-human practice of manual cleaning of human excreta, two technologies were developed by me: one for the individual households and the other applicable to toilets at public places, so that the practice of manual cleaning of excreta is dispensed with.
After relieving them from the demeaning practice, we have imparted to them education and vocational training, to enable them to become self-employed. Apart from other things, these scavengers now prepare eatables, like papads, noodles, pickles, which are bought locally by the people, a phenomenon unthinkable in the Indian society”.

We took some of them to New York to attend the event Mission Sanitation to mark the International Year of Sanitation-2008, where ministers and officials from more than 150 countries were present. They even got the chance to meet the President of India, Pratibha Devisingh Patil at Rashtrapati Bhawan besides meeting Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh and UPA Chairperson, Sonia Gandhi, he says.

Now, a group of around 200 liberated scavenger women are all set to visit Parliament to attend a function which is being organized specially to celebrate the victory over ‘untouchability’. The Speaker of Lok Sabha, Meira Kumar has agreed to meet them besides releasing two books.