Literally, this is a crappy job...

For those of you who think your job is a crappy one? Imagine having this job, Rakesh sits in a low crouch at the bottom of a seven-foot-deep manhole, sloshing away in a swirl of human waste and sediment.

As the article points out not only is the job horrible, but the pay is bad and the caste system is still alive and well in India where those of the lower socio-economic groups are forced to perform these types of jobs. It also points out how unsafe India is from a sanitary situation:

New Delhi was not built to accommodate its current population of about 16 million. With hundreds of thousands pouring in from rural areas annually, its sewers—about 3,700 miles of them—are a mess, and the workers tasked with keeping the waste flowing unobstructed (half of it empties into the nearby Yamuna River) regularly put their lives on the line. "The whole system is going to collapse in the next two years if it continues as it is now," says Mahendra Kumar, a junior engineer for Delhi Jal.

The disregard for human life is also very evident:

"I won't deny it—no safety equipment is used," says a junior engineer, Mahendra Kumar. "The attitude is strongly caste-biased, and there is tremendous insecurity in this job. Lower-caste people are looked upon as tools."