'Untouchables' cleaning up - as always

They are "untouchables", the lowest of the low in India's ancient caste system. No job is too dirty or too nasty, and they are the ones cleaning up rotting corpses from the tsunami.

By far the majority of the 1000 or so men sweating away in the tropical heat to clear the poor south Indian fishing town of Nagapattinam, which bore the brunt of the giant wave, are lower caste dalits from neighbouring villages.

Locals too afraid of disease and too sickened by the smell refuse to join the grim task of digging friends and neighbours out of the sand and debris. They just stand and watch the dalits work.

Although it has been a week since the tsunami hit, and the destruction was confined to a tiny strip by the beach and port, the devastation was so fierce that several bodies - located by the stench and the flies - are still being discovered daily.

"I am only doing what I would do for my own wife and child," says Mohan, a dalit municipal cleaner, as he takes a break to wash off some of the grime of the day's work.

"It is our duty. If a dog is dead, or a person, we have to clean it up."

Mohan and other sanitation workers from neighbouring municipalities are working around the clock to clear Nagapattinam for an extra 50c a day and a meal.

The smell of death still hangs heavily, mixing with the sea breeze and the almost refreshingly tart smell of the antiseptic lime powder that has turned some streets and paths white.

More than 5525 people - close to 40 per cent of India's fatalities - died along this small stretch of pure white beach, where the huts of poor fishermen were built down to the sand.

Caste still plays a defining role in much of Indian society. Over 16 per cent of India's billion-plus people are dalits. Despite laws banning caste discrimination, they are still routinely abused, mistreated and even killed.

Just over two years ago, five dalits were lynched near New Delhi after a rumour spread that they had killed and skinned a cow, revered as sacred in India. An autopsy on the cow - none were done for the dalits - confirmed the story their friends told: the cow had died of other causes and they were skinning it legally.

The dalits do jobs others won't - clean toilets, collect garbage, skin cows.

For Mohan, illiterate, uneducated and low caste, the only way to get a Government job and the security and pension that comes with it was as a municipal sanitation worker.

Soon after the tsunami, Mohan and his colleagues worked feverishly to clear the thousands of bodies without gloves, masks or even shoes in some cases. Now they are better equipped. But no mask stops the gagging smell of rotting flesh.

- REUTERS