New Delhi- A documentary about sanitation workers who kept two major Delhi hospitals functioning through the COVID-19 pandemic, performed work beyond their designated duties and risked their lives, is now facing its third blocked screening at a film festival.
‘Sanitised Republic: Cast(e) & Contracts’, directed by independent filmmakers Afiya Khalid and Rizwan Rahman, was officially selected for the 18th International Documentary and Short Film Festival of Kerala (IDSFFK), popularly known as the Kerala Film Festival scheduled to take place from September 25 to 30, in Thiruvananthapuram. But the filmmakers were informed by the festival organisers that the film could not be screened because the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting had not granted the required censor exemption.
The Ministry has not granted permission for 31 films at the festival, including 18 officially selected films and nine films in the International Non-Fiction section, where ‘Sanitised Republic’ was selected.
The film follows sanitation workers at Kalawati Saran Children’s Hospital and Lady Hardinge Medical College in Delhi, many of them from Dalit and marginalised communities, who continued working during the COVID-19 pandemic despite the risks. They performed their regular duties and, according to the filmmakers, additional unpaid work, hoping that their contribution during the health crisis would lead to permanent employment.
Instead, they lost their jobs in June 2022.
The documentary follows their subsequent struggle for employment and dignity, moving through courtrooms, street protests and the workers’ everyday lives. At its core is a question the filmmakers say India has not adequately confronted: why does sanitation work remain so deeply connected to caste, and why are workers performing essential labour repeatedly pushed into insecure contractual employment?
The current controversy is not the film’s first encounter with the screening-clearance system. According to Afiya and Rizwan, the documentary has now been denied screening at three festivals- the Durgapur Film Festival, the Ritu Rangam Film Festival and IDSFFK.
And, according to the filmmakers, the objections changed each time they complied with the Ministry’s demands.
During COVID, the contradiction became more stark when the sanitation workers again did all kinds of work in hospitals, from handling dead bodies to taking care of babies and their mothers. Their labour was necessary yet socially devalued and was kept at the margins of safety and insecurity.
The filmmakers said the Ministry initially objected to a few seconds of audio in which Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the COVID-19 lockdown.
They removed the audio.
The objection then changed to what the Ministry described as “specific references” to the Prime Minister. The filmmakers revised the documentary again and resubmitted it.
Permission was still not granted.
The filmmakers told The Mooknayak that they do not know what the Ministry’s internal objection actually is. They say they followed the instructions they were given, but the exemption was still not granted. For them, that sequence made it difficult to understand the issue simply as an objection to a few references to the Prime Minister.
The film, they stress, is about the caste structure and contractual labour in sanitation work. It has been made from the workers’ own testimonies and experiences.
“If there is a specific concern with the subject matter and issues raised, we believe that filmmakers should be told what that concern is,” the filmmakers said.
The third festival denial has therefore pushed the filmmakers to ask a larger question about what happens when the experiences of sanitation workers are documented and brought into public view.
For Afiya and Rizwan, the film is not an academic or abstract discussion of caste. "Our film is not an abstract argument about caste. It is a reality which many people refuse to acknowledge.
The film follows workers who were not only doing designated labour, but extra unpaid labour during COVID, in the hope of permanent jobs. Still, they were denied. If such experiences cannot enter public discourse, then the problem is larger than a particular film.
But the repeated difficulty in getting the film screened has raised a larger question for us: What happens when anyone documents and records the experiences of sanitation workers whose labour is essential to the functioning of every institution, but whose voices and working conditions remain uncomfortable to represent publicly?"
The filmmakers were asked whether they believed the obstruction was related to the film’s content, its caste question, or their Muslim identities.
Their response was more structural.
They said they believe the issue is largely connected to the regulation of digital content under new IT rules and regulations, arguing that documentaries come under online curated content. "We think that the issue is largely connected to the regulation of digital content under new IT rules and regulations, and documentaries are under the online curated content. The concern is not just traditional censorship but the fact that different institutional and legal mechanisms are determining the type of content and its public presence in festivals," they said.
They believe different institutional and legal mechanisms are now determining what kind of content can have a public presence, including at film festivals.
The filmmakers did not claim to know the Ministry’s internal reasoning. But the repeated screening difficulties, in their view, have raised questions about the broader regulatory environment in which documentary films are being produced, screened and circulated.
The film is located in two Delhi hospitals, but the filmmakers say Delhi should not be mistaken for the extent of the problem.
“Delhi is just a space. The problem is structural,” they said.
The documentary asks who actually performs sanitation work across different sectors in India. According to the filmmakers, such workers mostly come from Dalit and marginalised backgrounds.
The film therefore looks beyond the physical act of cleaning hospitals.
It asks who performed the work that became indispensable during the pandemic, who risked their lives as frontline workers and how the government subsequently treated them.
It also questions why people from marginalised backgrounds are repeatedly pushed into contractual labour and why government bodies do not regularise them.
The filmmakers say caste is deeply “coded” into society and the state, allowing exploitation to continue.
“Is the reason caste?” is one of the questions the film raises.
But the documentary does not provide a simple answer. Instead, it leaves the question with the audience.
The filmmakers say the changing objections, from the Prime Minister’s lockdown audio to “specific references”, have made them question whether the discomfort is really about what was used in the film.
They believe the more difficult material may be what the workers themselves say.
The documentary records what happened inside the hospitals during COVID, how the pandemic was managed and what happened to the frontline workers, particularly sanitation workers, who helped keep those hospitals running.
The workers also take viewers back to a period when people were losing loved ones and when, in many cases, deaths could have been prevented, according to their recollections.
The film, the directors say, documents truths about how the crisis was experienced and handled.
“We did not say anything from our side,” they said. “This is documentation of the time and situation.”
One sequence concerns flower petals. The filmmakers place an official version of the event alongside the interpretation of sanitation workers from Dalit and marginalised backgrounds.
The documentary does not tell the viewer which version to accept.
“The audience has to decide whose version they believe,” the filmmakers said.
The title ‘Sanitised Republic’ is itself an argument about visibility.
The filmmakers say the idea of a “clean India” can make cleanliness and sanitation appear to be a neutral public good. " But cleaning is not a neutral form of labour; rather, it is caste-coded. For centuries, Dalit marginalised communities have been pushed into caste-based sanitation work that others have considered polluted. Hence, stigma is associated with the work, which then follows the workers’ social identity.
During COVID, the contradiction became more stark when the sanitation workers again did all kinds of work in hospitals, from handling dead bodies to taking care of babies and their mothers. Their labour was necessary yet socially devalued and was kept at the margins of safety and insecurity. That is what the word ‘sanitised’ means for us. The hospital can appear clean, the city can appear clean, the nation can celebrate “Swachh Bharat” while caste-coded labour and the people performing it remain outside of that image. Sanitised Republic centralised the workers and citizens whose labour, caste, employment, and rights are a part of the story of how this republic is made," Afiya said.
Courtrooms and streets both appear in the film. The Mooknayak asked the film makers which space actually recognises these workers as 'citizens'. Rizwan and Afiya's response is straightforward. " In the times, politics and structure we are living in, no space actually recognises workers as citizens. In a democracy, the court is often expected to be the space where people can get justice. But we all know who justice is actually for. And even when the court rules in favour of the people, that ruling does not always translate into implementation."
They continued, " In our documentary, the workers also shared that the court had ordered in their favour, but those orders were not implemented even after two years had passed (by the time the documentary was finalised). So the courtroom may produce the language of citizenship, but it does not translate into lived citizenship. Justice remains selective, delayed, and often unreachable. On the street, workers’ agitation is viewed as a disruption, and sometimes they are seen as victims, but in most cases not as citizens. This is also why the state responds to them through security forces more readily than it would to others."
The film’s most direct critique concerns contractual employment. The filmmakers describe the contract labour system depicted in the documentary in stark terms: “The contract labour system is nothing but an improved version of bonded labour.”
After three festival denials, what does “the right to be seen” mean for a film that is itself about people the state refuses to see as permanent?
The Filmmakers emphasized, " In this case, we can say the state actually breached "the right to be seen". Festival screening requires a censor exemption, and the exemption has been denied. The film exists; the workers’ testimonies exist. The evidence of what happened in Delhi's hospitals during COVID exists. But they cannot be publicly seen through the channels the state controls.
In this film's specific case, these workers are from Dalit and marginalised communities, who kept hospitals running during a pandemic but were not treated as citizens. They were forced to do what was not their duty. And now the state cannot unwrite what happened. But it can control who gets to see what happened to them, to those who actually risked their lives, were fired from their jobs, and left to live without any means. That is the point. So when we ask what the right to be seen means for this film, the answer is this: it means everything the workers were denied."
The film runs for approximately 19 minutes and 30 seconds and was shot in three phases.
The first phase was during COVID. The second covered the workers’ sit-in protest. The third followed the workers’ legal struggle.
By the time the film was completed, many of the workers were still without permanent employment and were struggling with legal costs arising from cases they had filed to assert their rights.
Some of the people who participated in the documentary were still working in contractual jobs and living with continuing employment insecurity.
For many, the consequences of losing their earlier jobs had become severe.
By the time the documentary was completed, the filmmakers said, many had been unemployed for nearly three years.
They were facing serious economic hardship.
The directors described what they saw when they visited Kanti Lal’s home.
He had suffered a leg fracture during this period. His house was in poor condition, and he had to negotiate a narrow staircase with an injured leg.
His wife was struggling to manage the household alone.
His health problems were compounded by the family’s existing financial uncertainty.
The filmmakers said that by the time they completed the documentary, many of the workers had been pushed into severe economic distress.
Yet they did not abandon their struggle.
They continued attending court hearings.
They continued fighting for their rights.
And, according to the filmmakers, their fight is still continuing.
The filmmakers were asked what would be lost if ‘Sanitised Republic’ never receives a public screening in India.
Their answer was unequivocal: it would not primarily be their loss.
“If the film never screens publicly in India, our loss as directors is insignificant compared to what will actually be lost,” they said.
What would be lost, they argue, is the opportunity for the workers’ voices to be heard.
Kantilal, Sarfaraz, Sunita, Sewak Ram and the other workers have placed their experiences and struggles before the camera because they hoped that what they had endured would become known beyond their immediate surroundings.
The workers had spent more than a year fighting on the streets of Delhi.
They wanted the world to know what they had experienced.
The filmmakers believe their struggle and experiences could inspire others.
But they fear that if the film never screens in India, that hope and that struggle could remain silenced.
The phrase “educate, agitate, organise”, as Sewak Ram explains it at one point in the film, becomes part of that concern.
The state, the filmmakers say, has already refused to recognise these workers as permanent employees.
If their story also cannot be publicly screened, they ask what happens to their right to have their struggle recognised and remembered. “If their film cannot be screened, nothing will be sadder than this,” they said.
Despite being selected for festivals, ‘Sanitised Republic’ has not yet had an official premiere anywhere.
It is also not currently available online.
The filmmakers told The Mooknayak that they plan to organise a few screenings and subsequently upload the documentary to their YouTube channel, ‘Cowbelt Studios’.
That means that, for now, a film documenting the experiences of sanitation workers during one of the most consequential public-health crises in recent history remains largely unseen.
The workers’ testimonies exist.
The film exists.
The struggle exists.
But the audience does not yet have access to it through the festival circuit.
For Afiya and Rizwan, the question is therefore no longer simply whether a 19-minute documentary can be screened at a film festival.
It is whether the people who have historically been made invisible by caste and precarious labour can be allowed to document their own lives and whether the public will be allowed to see what they have recorded.
The film’s title offers its own stark formulation: a republic may appear clean, but the people whose labour produces that cleanliness can still remain unseen.
Afiya Khalid is a research scholar and independent filmmaker whose work combines social research and documentary filmmaking. She holds a BA (Hons) in Mass Media from Jamia Millia Islamia, a Master’s degree in Sociology from Jawaharlal Nehru University and an MPhil from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences. She is currently pursuing her PhD at TISS.
Her doctoral research examines the impact of imprisonment on families, particularly women and children, and explores how imprisonment shapes everyday life, social relationships and experiences of exclusion. Her academic work has informed her documentary filmmaking, including her interest in caste, labour, social exclusion and the everyday experiences of marginalised communities.
Rizwan Rahman is an independent journalist, researcher and documentary filmmaker based in India. His work focuses on Indigenous communities, human rights and climate change. He has worked with open-source intelligence, reported stories, long-form analysis and visual narratives.
Rahman has studied Culture, Media and Governance and Sociology at the master’s level and has written for The Hindu, The Wire, Article 14, The Electronic Intifada and other publications. He is currently working on documentaries about Indigenous communities.
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