This paper focuses on the extreme exclusion and discrimination the sanitation workers in India are facing in the times of the Covid-19 pandemic despite providing essential services. It revisits the idea of social distancing, which the low caste/untouchables have always faced in Indian society that is stratified along caste1 lines along with class, gender and other forms of inequalities. With over 95% of Indians observing endogamy, a “permanent social distancing” has prevailed in India for centuries; now, many of them think science has offered them one more reason for holding the beliefs they do. Caste aided by the virus has not only kept people segregated; it has valorized the very idea of it. This paper also addresses the question of the non-existent social security that led to enormous economic and social hardships during and after the lockdown for the laborers and sanitation workers including women, waste pickers and drain cleaners who got further stigmatized because of the job they do. Caste-class cleavages along with patriarchal norms became more apparent in the name of hygiene and social distancing norms as the domestic and external labor of Dalit2 women get caught up in the challenges that a neo-liberal capitalist economy offers, further marginalizing them.