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Friday March 29, 2024

Indian campaigner against caste prejudice wins ‘Asia’s Nobel’

By our correspondents
September 01, 2016

MANILA: An activist who campaigned to restore the dignity of India’s low-caste Dalits was among six winners of Asia’s Magsaysay awards on Wednesday.

The Manila-based Ramon Magsaysay Award, named after a Filipino president killed in a plane crash, was established in 1957 to honour people and groups tackling development problems. It is often described as Asia’s Nobel Prize.

Bezwada Wilson, 50, founded a grassroots movement to stop "manual scavenging" -- in which Dalits, mostly women and girls, remove by hand human waste from latrines and carry away baskets of excrement on their heads.

Wilson, born to a Dalit family, was honoured for his "moral outrage" and organising skills in his efforts to ban the demeaning work, judges said.

His group has successfully lobbied for laws supporting scavengers and conducted training to move them to better jobs.

"No human being should be subjected to this inhuman practice," Wilson said.

Indian musician Thodur Madabusi Krishna, 40, won the Award for Emergent Leadership for spreading appreciation of classical music to lower castes through his foundation that trains talented rural young people.