By IndiaTomorrow.net,
Mumbai, 07 July 2015: If you have will nothing can stop you from getting education – and even higher education. Sunil Yadav, 36, has proved it. Yadav, while collecting garbage to earn livelihood, has earned four degrees in the last nine years. Currently he is pursuing M Phil at the reputed Tata Institute of Social Sciences.
Yadav works with the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) in Mumbai as a garbage collector, says NDTV news channel in a report. http://www.ndtv.com/mumbai-news/he-has-four-degrees-but-works-as-a-garbage-collector-in-mumbai-778814?pfrom=home-lateststories
“We were born as scavengers. Right from our birth we have been slaves. We never really had any rights. We are trying to get out of it, and there is only one way to do that. Baba Saheb Ambedkar said ‘if you study, you will grow’, but people still don’t accept us,” said Yadav.
Between 2005 and 2014, Yadav completed his B Com, BA in journalism, MA in Globalisation and Labour, Masters in Social Work and is currently pursuing M Phil at TISS.
“I got down into a drain on my first day of work. For days after that, the smell didn’t leave my mind. I walked through water with dead animals. That’s when I decided I had to study and get out of this vicious cycle,” Yadav recalled in an interview with NDTV.
Four generations of Yadav’s family have worked as manual scavengers. Sunil Yadav took up his father’s place at the BMC after he was declared medically unfit.
“Not every Dalit is a scavenger, but every scavenger is a Dalit. There is 100 per cent reservation in that category”, Yadav said sarcastically.
