Sanitation work in Punjab, in towns and in villages, is done overwhelmingly by people from the Valmiki and Mazhabi communities, which is the same caste allocation of the work that existed before any of the modern institutions did.
Municipal safai karamchari posts are formally open and are filled almost entirely from those communities. Contractual and informal sanitation work is filled the same way with none of the protections.
Manual scavenging is prohibited by law and continues in parts of India including Punjab, and deaths in sewers and septic tanks are reported regularly across the country.
The Valmiki community's principal pilgrimage, at Ram Tirath near Amritsar, draws several lakh people a year and is one of the largest gatherings in the Majha.
A society that made this allocation of work five hundred years ago and abolished it doctrinally in the same period still runs on it, and that is the plainest available statement of the gap between Punjab's stated values and its arrangements.
The cleaning of drains, streets, sewers and septic tanks in Punjab is done almost entirely by people from one set of communities, and that has not changed with mechanisation or with law.
Mechanised cleaning equipment has been bought by a number of Punjab municipalities and stands unused where there is no trained operator or no maintenance budget, so the work goes on being done by hand beside the machine.
The municipal safai karamchari unions are among the older organised labour bodies in Punjab and their disputes are usually about regularisation of contract workers.