| Summary/Abstract |
Sanitation work is considered highly polluted in Hindu society and the stigma inflicted on sweepers and manual scavengers (safai karamcharis) extends to their children. This paper examines how safai karamcharis navigate parenting from the ‘polluted’ margins. It explores strategies adopted to protect children from stigma and explains how these strategies are temporal and partial. It also discusses the hope parents place on education for their children’s social mobility but how securing quality education is fraught with challenges, and that while education is necessary it is insufficient for the children of safai karamcharis to achieve social mobility and freedom from caste-based occupational rigidity.
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