Manual scavenging in India remains deeply entrenched in caste-based hierarchy and social exclusion, with those engaged in this occupation overwhelmingly drawn from historically marginalised communities. An overwhelming majority of manual scavengers belong to Dalit communities, so caste continues to determine who performs India’s most hazardous and dehumanising labour. This paper undertakes a doctrinal and comparative analysis of the Employment of Manual Scavengers and Construction of Dry Latrines (Prohibition) Act, 1993 and the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, 2013, examining their constitutional basis, definitional reach, rehabilitation design, penalties and institutional oversight. It advances two hypotheses. The first is that the 2013 Act keeps open the very practice it prohibits, because the definition of “hazardous cleaning” in Section 2(1)(d) withdraws the prohibition in Section 7 wherever the prescribed protective gear and devices are supplied. The second is that the deaths that continue in sewers and septic tanks are explained less by any gap in the constitutional or statutory text than by administrative denial, systematic undercounting in official surveys, and the interposition of private contractors between the state and the worker. The paper situates both claims within the guarantees of Articles 14, 17, 21 and 23, within the penal provisions of the Protection of Civil Rights Act, 1955 and the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, and within India’s commitments under the ICESCR, the ILO conventions, CERD and CEDAW. It then traces the judicial response from People’s Union for Democratic Rights (1982), through Delhi Jal Board (2011) and Safai Karamchari Andolan (2014), to Balram Singh (2023) and its continuing supervision, and assesses the institutional position of the National Commission for Safai Karamcharis. Six recommendations follow, directed at legislative amendment, enforcement and rehabilitation.