Bezwada Wilson

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Bezwada Wilson is an Indian human rights activist. He is one of the founders and National Convenor of the Safai Karmachari Andolan (SKA), an organization working to eradicate the practice of manual scavenging and provide better employment for manual scavengers in India.His parents were living in separation for seven years, and a year before the birth of Wilson, they had got back together.Wilsons mother considered him a miracle baby in his childhood and pledged to provide him with education, unlike his other siblings who never received an education.His family shifted to Hyderabad when he was in middle school; he completed his schooling in Hyderabad.When he was in class twelve, he dropped out of his school and carried out functional literacy classes for the women from the Telugu-speaking families of manual scavengers every evening. [5]Livemint.Later, he completed his twelfth and did his graduation in Political Science from Dr B. R. Ambedkar Open University, Hyderabad. At the same time, he indulged himself in community service, especially youth programs.In 1986, after he passed out from his school, he noticed people doing manual scavaging and was disgusted and appalled at the sight of it. He told his parents about it, who in turn told him that they did the same job. It was very distressing for him because he had no clue that he was from a Thoti family. It was so nerve-wracking for him that he contemplated suicide but somehow decided to live with a pledge to make lives better for such people.After he completed his schooling, Wilson went to the Employment Exchange Office in search of a job. To his dismay, he was told that he would be given the job of a sanitation worker because of his caste. Enraged with the treatment he got, he decided to return to Kolar and motivate the Dalits there to fight against the caste-imposed occupation.Bezwada started his career as an activist by first educating his family and relatives about manual scavaging as they were the first hurdle that he had to face in his fight against manual scavenging. They were opposed to his ideas at first, as they believed that he should not focus on something that always existed. However, in a year, they understood him after seeing his determination to eradicate manual scavenging.In 1986, he started talking to manual scavengers and educated them. He then began a letter-writing campaign and wrote to inform the KGF authorities, the ministers of Karnataka, the Prime Minister of India, and newspapers, of the manual scavaging, which remained largely unaccepted.