Five men died while cleaning a sewer in a Delhi apartment complex last Sunday. The outcry that resulted was unusual. After all, the National Commission for Safai Karamcharis estimates that 612 people have died cleaning sewers since 1993 (although real numbers may actually be much higher), with one dying every five days since 2017. That's not counting those who die from illness and infection because of handling faeces and waste without protection.

The workers who died on Sunday were not sewage workers. They worked for a contractor who had been sub-contracted by JLL, a larger company responsible for maintaining the apartment block where they worked. Even after one person who entered the sewer did not come out and another who went after him fainted, their supervisor sent others in, who died.