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. But Vijay Shehriyar, part of the same Delhi initiative, explains that the machines have not entirely replaced manual scavenging in the city. Bezwada Wilson, an activist who has long campaigned for the eradication of manual scavenging, explains that most of the drainage and sewage systems across the country are not well planned and were built without proper engineering oversight.