Anjali Mohanta is a community leader working in Sukinda block of Jajpur district, Odisha. Her engagement in grassroots work began at a young age following her marriage at seventeen and the responsibilities of raising two children. She started by working on village-level governance issues related to water supply and MGNREGS supervision. This introduced her to local administrative systems and development processes. Recognising the role of education in enabling participation and leadership, Anjali resumed her studies while managing household responsibilities, completing her higher secondary education and a postgraduate diploma in computer applications. In 2010, she trained as a government poultry vaccinator, supporting rural livelihoods and women’s nutrition through village-level outreach and service delivery. This work deepened her understanding of health, nutrition, and structural vulnerabilities within mining-affected communities. Anjali’s focus on tuberculosis care emerged from her own prolonged experience with TB diagnosis and treatment between 2012 and 2014. Since 2015, she began supporting TB patients in her Gram Panchayat for treatment, addressing stigma and barriers to care. From 2022, she has been working with Ekta Niketan leading a community-based initiative to provide, end-to-end TB care across 7 Gram Panchayats in Sukinda, involving screening, referral, treatment adherence, and follow-up in coordination with the public health system. In addition to health work, Anjali has held leadership roles as a Panchayat ward member and as president of the Gram Panchayat-level SHG Mahasangh, supporting women’s collective action, engagement with local governance, and campaigns addressing alcoholism and environmental health concerns linked to mining. Despite personal loss, including the recent death of her husband, she continues her work with sustained community trust and commitment, grounded in collective care and local leadership.

Arvind Borkar is a voluntary sector worker based in Yavatmal district, Maharashtra, with over two decades of engagement in rural, tribal and Dalit communities. Growing up in a tribal area, he witnessed persistent challenges related to land alienation, social exclusion and limited access to rights and entitlements. These early experiences shaped his long-term commitment to dignity, social justice and community-led development. While still a student, Arvind began engaging with social issues and governance processes affecting marginalized communities. In 2006, he co-founded Sant Kabir Krida, Shikshan va Gramin Vikas Bahuuddeshiya Sanstha with like-minded people to work collectively on issues in rural and tribal areas. The organisation initially focused on mobilising women through self-help groups, facilitating savings, bank linkages, financial literacy and livelihood skill development to strengthen economic participation and local leadership. Over time, Arvind led sustained efforts to secure individual and collective land rights for tribal and Dalit farmers across villages in Yavatmal and adjoining talukas. Through continuous engagement with Gram Sabhas and district administration, the organisation has supported individual land claims and facilitated collective claims in multiple villages, strengthening farmers’ tenure security. He has also been actively involved in land and water regeneration initiatives, including silt-free dam programmes, pond restoration, organic farming and mixed orchard plantations, contributing to improved soil fertility, water conservation and rural livelihoods. Arvind works both as a field worker and an organiser, maintaining close engagement with communities while bridging them with government systems such as MGNREGA and land administration. He has focussed on youth leadership development by promoting Gram Sabha participation, mentoring young volunteers and encouraging democratic decision-making at the village level. His work consistently emphasises community ownership, constitutional values and leadership from within, contributing to the transformation of villages into spaces of greater self-reliance, equity, and collective dignity.

Dharam Das started his career as a scavenger and through struggle liberated himself from the restrictions he faced. He is now leading the manual scavenging and sanitation workers’ community in six districts in Jharkhand.

Heera Devi is a community leader based in Lunkaransar block of Bikaner district, Rajasthan, with over fourteen years of grassroots experience focused on girls’ education, prevention of child marriage and women’s leadership. Married at a young age, she continued her education despite social pressure and early motherhood, completing her senior secondary education and emerging as a local advocate for girls’ rights. Heera Devi’s engagement deepened after joining Urmul Setu Sansthan, where she began working with adolescent girls, women and families affected by early marriage, gender discrimination and limited access to education. She formed adolescent girls’ collectives, women’s self-help groups and community forums to address child marriage, school dropouts and awareness of government welfare schemes. Initially facing resistance, including exclusion from some villages, she gradually built trust through sustained dialogue and community participation. Heera has supported families in accessing pensions, Palanhar benefits and other welfare entitlements and played a key role in upgrading seven schools in the Lunkaransar block, enabling hundreds of girls to continue their education. A central outcome of her work has been the mentoring of 72 adolescent girl leaders who now engage with panchayats, lead awareness initiatives and support other girls in pursuing education and public participation. Her work reflects a participatory, community-rooted approach to advancing gender equality, and education in rural Rajasthan.

Kalamuddin Ansari is a voluntary sector worker based in Garhwa district, Jharkhand, with over eighteen years of grassroots experience working with Adivasi and tribal communities on livelihoods, rights awareness and social justice. His engagement began in 2007 through village-level mobilisation to improve access to employment, food security and basic entitlements in a region marked by poverty and limited institutional reach. He played a key role in facilitating access to MGNREGA job cards and Public Distribution System ration cards for hundreds of families, strengthening food and income security. His work later expanded to social audits of public schemes, contributing to greater transparency and accountability at the local level. Kalamuddin has also supported Adivasi communities in claiming forest rights and securing land tenure under the Forest Rights Act. A significant dimension of his work includes addressing human trafficking and child labour, in coordination with the Child Welfare Committee and District Legal Services Authority, supporting rescue, rehabilitation and reintegration of affected girls. Kalamuddin has also promoted sustainable agriculture through training in the SRI method, millet cultivation and organic farming, contributing to climate-resilient livelihoods. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he coordinated relief efforts to ensure food and essential support reached vulnerable families. Currently, as a legal awareness trainer and community mentor, he continues to build local leadership, confidence and participation rooted in constitutional values and community trust.

Kshirasindhu Sagaria is a community leader based in Nuapada district, Odisha, with over fifteen years of grassroots engagement focused on governance accountability, social security and community empowerment among Dalit and Adivasi communities. Trained as a teacher, his work evolved from education into rights-based issues aimed at strengthening transparency and citizen participation. In 2009, his investigation and use of the Right to Information Act exposed large-scale corruption in the implementation of MGNREGS, leading to the suspension of multiple officials. Similar interventions in Anganwadi appointments resulted in administrative action. Despite facing sustained backlash, including false cases and intimidation, he continued his work with strong community support grounded in transparency and collective action. Kshirasindhu has played a key role in organising community forums such as Dom Gana Samaj and Dalit–Adivasi platforms to address corruption, access food and livelihood entitlements and demand forest rights under the Forest Rights Act. Through social audits, village meetings and participatory planning, he has enabled villagers to engage directly with governance processes . During the COVID-19 period, he coordinated community relief, rights awareness and livelihood recovery efforts. His work reflects a participatory approach rooted in constitutional values of equity, accountability and social justice.

Mallepalli Laxmaiah is a senior voluntary sector worker and a prominent contributor to social issues based in Telangana, with over four decades of engagement on Dalit rights, social justice and participatory governance. Born into a Dalit family in Karimnagar district, his early experiences of caste discrimination and violence shaped a lifelong commitment to equity, dignity and constitutional values. As a student, he began organising community meetings, grounding his work in collective leadership and grassroots mobilisation. Laxmaiah’s journalism career became a central vehicle for social change. Over forty years, his reporting consistently amplified Dalit and Adivasi concerns, exposing systemic injustice, policy failures and misuse of welfare funds across Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. In 1999, he founded the Centre for Dalit Studies to move from documentation to policy change and institutional reform. Through research, alliances and sustained mobilisation, he played a pivotal role in shaping rights-based development frameworks, most notably contributing to the enactment of the SCSP–TSP Act, which legally safeguards budgetary allocations for marginalised communities. His work has consistently focused on transforming welfare into entitlement, strengthening accountability and mentoring new generations of leaders committed to equality and democratic participation.

As a liberated woman scavenger, she organizes women from the community in National Community Region. “I worked for years lifting waste. After coming into the movement, I left the work and motivated women in my neighbourhood to move into other livelihoods, working to get them access to e-rickshaws or other means through Safai Karamachari Andolan,” states Meenu. She is instrumental for many women’s liberation from manual scavenging in her work since two decades.

She is active in organizing safai Karmacahri youth in Gumla, an interior forested district in Jharkhand, and is organizing youth associations among the manual scavenging community.

Pawan Nakawal, Jaipur (Rajasthan), works as a senior leader of the community. He has led surveys to identify manual scavengers in 21 districts of Rajasthan to work towards eradication of manual scavenging. He aims to build community leaders and improving access to education for Dalit workers in around Jaipur.

Poonam Tushamad, Delhi is an Ambedkarite activist, apoet, writer, scholar, and a strong voice against patriarchy and caste in the scavenging community. She has a Phd and has published articles and is an author of two books and two poetry volumes on caste and gender inequalities. She is the first woman in her family to earn a doctorate. She believes the imposition of sanitation and scavenging work on Valimiki because of caste practices must end. “Why only us, after all?” she asks.

Pravesh Chhachhar migrated from Meerut to work in Delhi. He worked in the non profit sector but left the job after facing caste disrcimination. He then started an organisation focusing on English speaking courses within the manual scavenging community living in Rohini in north west Delhi.15. Preeti, from the Trilokpuri slum of Delhi organises school lessons and leads computer training in basic programmes for scavenging community girls and boys in an industrial shed in Trilokpuri, Delhi. She began community work five years back.

Raj Valmiki, Ranjit Nagar, Delhi is a poet, writer, and workers’ rights activist. His parents did not go to school and his mother worked as a manual scavenger to support his education. As an adolescent, Valmiki taught remedial classes to younger children to support his own education so that his mother did not have to continue manual scavenging to support his education. He earned a Masters in Social Work and as a member of the Dalit Writers’ Union, he has raised his voice against social inequalities as well as a strong voice against caste system. He is hopeful that the community through their struggle will completely eradicate the practice of manual scavenging.

Ravita Kherwal, Chandigarh lost her parents early in her life. She was brought up by her grandmother who worked as a manual scavenger and encouraged her education. She became the first woman to do a BA in her local community and started work as a youth activist in Dehradun and later relocated to Chandigarh. She has organized sanitation workers in Chandigarh and led a campaign to support families of seven sewer cleaning workers to get Rs 13 lakh compensation from the government after their deaths inside manholes. She is active in organising the community to access school admissions to institutions through the provisions in Right to Education for economically weaker sections.

SK Riazuddin is a voluntary sector worker from Birbhum district, West Bengal, with over twenty-five years of grassroots engagement across health, education, community mobilisation and sustainable livelihoods. His work began informally in the late 1990s through community-led responses to local crises, including rebuilding a village school after a fire through collective contributions and volunteer labour. Riazuddin has played a significant role in improving public health outreach in Muslim-majority and tribal villages, particularly during immunisation campaigns where mistrust of government services was high. By engaging religious leaders, elders and local cultural practices, he helped build community acceptance for vaccination and preventive healthcare, leading to improved participation in public health programmes. Along with health work, SK Riazuddin has contributed to initiatives on improved literacy, community theatre, and environmental education. In recent years, he has focused on linking education with nutrition and sustainability by supporting school-based nutri-gardens that supply vegetables for midday meals while promoting ecological awareness and dignity of labour among children. His work is rooted in trust, participation and long-term community relationships, reflecting core constitutional values of inclusion, fraternity and collective responsibility.