India is still working on sewer robots

More than 220 Bandicoot robots have been deployed in India, says Vipin Govind, head of marketing and communications at Genrobotics. The company's reach, he says, enables "even resource-constrained municipalities" to deploy the technology effectively. Despite these technological options, a 2021 report by the Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment found that there are still more than 58,000 manual scavengers across India. Independent observers say the numbers are even higher. The machine that Jitender uses is mounted on a pickup truck and uses rotating rods, high-pressure streams of water, and a mechanical claw to break up blockages and remove debris. "Earlier, a sanitation worker would get into a sewer and clear the drain with some equipment, but now with these machines we just drop the nozzle into the drain and turn on the pump," he says.