ASSOCIATED PRESSWilson, 50, whose own family had been engaged in manual scavenging for generations, said the award was recognition for women workers who had said no to scavenging. “The struggle is at the ground level and the challenge is to overthrow a deeply caste ridden attitude,” Wilson told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in an interview. The Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation named Bezwada Wilson one of six winners this year, citing his “moral energy and prodigious skill in leading a grassroots movement to eradicate the degrading servitude of manual scavenging in India”. ADVERTISEMENTCHENNAI, India, July 27 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - An Indian activist who helped to set up a human rights group campaigning for the eradication of manual scavenging, a euphemism for disposing of faeces by hand, was awarded Asia’s equivalent of the Nobel prize on Wednesday. “The real heroes are the women who organised themselves, questioned the practice and understood that no one is born into such forms of exploitation,” he added.

Source: Huffington Post July 28, 2016 16:41 UTC