Fed up of beggars, touristy Jaipur acts

indiamike

"Beggars by choice are lazy people who realise that the easiest means to survive is by taking alms."

There are few in this touristy capital of Rajasthan who have not been accosted by beggars.

Jaipur, with an estimated population of over 2.7 million and frequented by domestic and foreign tourists alike, has thousands of beggars.

Besides hassling tourists, they pose a traffic hazard as they come asking for alms at busy traffic intersections. Many beggars are said to be linked to crime.

It is to check this irksome phenomenon that a local NGO called Aakansha is launching an anti-begging campaign.

"We have decided to launch this campaign in a bid to curb the ever increasing number of beggars in this city," said Anupreeta Lall, general secretary of Aakansha.

"We would like to restrain people from giving alms."

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iyou

Perhaps in "India Shining" anyone who doesn't have a high-paying call center job can be put into a concentration camp far away from the sparkling cities and starved to death. Seriously, it doesn't seem as if anyone has the backbone to address the serious failings of the Indian state to provide a framework to educate, train and empower its people. The country is turning its back on the majority of its population in order to focus on rewarding the elites. Steam shoots out of my ears when I read about an "anti-begging" campaign. Excuse me? How about keeping kids, girls especially, in school until age 16 or 18? Ban child labor. Empower women. That would be a start. There are so many other things that could be done that would improve people's lives, but I'd start with kids. People turn to begging when they have no where else to go. Without education they'll never escape from their poverty. This is a fundamental truth.

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bijapuri

Who goes to Jaipur, anyway? Only the new, as far as I can tell. I do feel sorry for the firstimers who get roped into the circuit . . . If they'd listen to the vets here a lot of tout towns could be avoided or treaded upon quickly, malum?

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cyberhippie

Agreed Bij I spent one 2 days there and thought Jaipur was very ordinary!!
But it still seems to make the "must do' list of many people. Peronally almost anywhere in Rajasthan is better than Jaipur.
The touts and beggars there are ferocious, even I was loosing my cool with some of them.
But this idea for inforcing a boycott is pointless and wrong, as some of the beggars so rightly asked when you take away our livlihood are you going to find us jobs???
The answer of course is a resounding no, goverment responsability doesn't stretch that far.
Which may be true of course but the people who come up with these schemes are fully aware of the situation of no full employment in their city/municipality. So when they launch a campaign like this they are well aware that far from helping the lazy beggar back onto the path of rightousness they are effectivley consigning people to abject poverty. merely creating another problem for someone else to deal with.
As the article says there are criminal gangs who run begging rackets, but I supect there are many more people who beg because there is no other choice!!
Contrary to what the article proclaims from the roof tops not all beggars are just lazy people in love with the lifestyle of begging most do it because they have no other choice and many have never known any other way of life.
This idea by goverment officials that somehow with a little encouragment of the stick physcology kind (would use carrot and stick but where's the carrot??) all these lazy immoral people will just pop out and get a job leaving their philandering days behind them is frankly a lie!!
Let's get things in perspective here, full employment is a pipe dream that few countries if any realise. So emerging economies like India have little or no chance of providing full employment.
If you take these two statements as factual then your half way there as to why begging is so rife in India, coupled with lack of education and no social safety net you have the whole picture.
India is a long way from being able or willing to look after all her people, so to penalize the disinfranchised seems a rather arrogant and inhumane way to deal with the problem.
It would be an interesting experiment to get a couple of these idiots out of their crystal castles and make them live the life of a beggar for a month!!
Don't be fooled by this old con of personal responsabilty being paramount in these matters, personal responability only works in practise when there are options!! For most beggars there are no options as we see them, the only option is to go and put your hand out. Think that's easy go try it sometime!!
If the problem of beggars hassling people becomes chronic one way of tackling this would be to ask the police to do their job instead of taking bribes from beggars working their patch. The trouble makers do so fully aware that the local cop is turning a blind eye!!
Oh well that's my 2 cents worth!!

beach

Looks like a group of motivated people are trying to do something to clear up a mess. They should be right as they work in field and know what they are doing. Probably there is another group (or the same group) trying to rehabilitate them also.

I’m not all that knowledgeable about this subject. But all I know is that people who encourage the beggars are their (NGOs/administration) biggest challenge than the beggar themselves. That is the reason behind the "We would like to restrain people from giving alms." cry from the people who work on this. This is practically the only thing ordinary people can do to help. The paradox is unlike any other campaigns, here people are being asked to not to pay anything to help them!

Sorry, I’m just taking off my earlier texts, as it was a bit more on the political side than the issue of beggar menace. I honestly did not want to pull this thread into a different direction with debates and all on that way from the theme. May be I’ll post it later at a suitable (politics/population/GDP etc)thread if appropriate.

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ddutta

Beggar earns Rs 1,000 per day

Sambhaji Kale and his family of four beg for a living — and at the end of the day make a cool Rs 1,000. And when days are bad, they always have the Rs 40,000 stacked in the bank, a few thousand rupees in investment companies, a flat in Virar and two houses and a plot of land in Solapur, to fall back on.

Begging is a profitable venture in Mumbai, according to a survey carried out recently by the Social Development Centre with the help of Dr Chandrakant Puri, assistant director, Distance Education, SNDT.

Of the one lakh beggars in Mumbai, Sambhaji Kale is one of the richest, the survey has identified.

The Kales came to Mumbai 25 years ago in search of work. “We got married here and had many dreams. They all fell apart, and so we are on the road,” said Kale, pointing to a pile of wooden boxes near the Khar traffic signal which serves as his home.

The family says it would rather live in Khar and not in Virar (where they have a flat, given out on rent) as commuting every day would be costly.

The Kales have four children, one of whom (Somnath) is lame and collects maximum moolah by the end of the day. Somnath met with an accident while begging a few years ago and lost his leg.

The other three children — two girls and a boy — also beg.

“Sometime, we also sell odd things at traffic signals to make money,” said M Kale, Sambhaji’s wife.

The family belongs to the Pardhi tribe and according to Vijay Karande, secretary of Social Development Centre, they would rather beg than work.

“The Kales do not like to admit they are beggars. That goes for most beggars. They like to think they earn their living working,” said Karande.

The Kales are quite a known family in and around Khar. Letters and other correspondence from the banks reaches them properly even though they hardly have an address.

“That is because we have a clean reputation and never get into trouble with police,” said Sambhaji.

Karande is trying to get Kale’s children into a school that he is running primarily for beggar children at Khar.

“We need to educate them, but it is a difficult task because the Kale couple hardly begs these days. They depend on their children to get in the money,” said Karande.

From:- http://www.andhravision.com/articles/begger.htm

cyberhippie

Great piece of writing beach, up to your usual high standard and very insightful!!

bijapuri

The story about the well off beggar reminds me of the old American stereotype of the welfare mom who drives a cadillac. It was instrumental in Ronald Regan's efforts to "reform" aid to deprive it of those most needful of it (and give it to the military, I might add . . .). It is probably true that one clan does well. About the millions (?) who literally are born beggars and so spend their short and yucky lives, the strereotype is unlikely to hold. Anectdotal evidence is the flimsiest.

I hereby proclaim that I have absolutely no ideas for solving, mitigating or even enduring the situation, except to continue to work for an NGO in Bangalore and Hyderabad.

crvlvr

Beach,

Great write up.. But I think the distribution should be more like:

The Top – 150 million -- 50Million

The middle -600 million -- 300 Million

The poor – 250million -- 550 million

The downtrodden – 100 million -- 100 million

I read somewhere that only about 1-5% of the Indian population pays income tax and 50 % of the world population ( most of them in India and China) live on less than $2 a day, and 20% live on less than a $1 a day..

Sad, but true..

anonymous

Some moralists on this site become agitated if the "underdog" is portrayed in an unfavorable light. Up to now, these political frays were frowned upon because IM had an ethic of goodie-goodie friendliness.

With any kind of luck, I should be in India in a few weeks time. Then I should have lots of opportunities to interact with beggars. If past experience is anything to go by, sometimes I will push beggars out of my way and sometimes I wll be exceedingly generous. Depends of my mood, mere mortal that I am. Anyway, I'll be in India and won't have to obey the usual rules.

cyberhippie

I wasn't aware that mike was expressing an opinion he just stuck the article up there to let others express their opinions which we've all done I think!!

Ikuru

With the risk of sounding a bit uneducated I would still like to ask...
Where did this poverty in India Originate from?
Is it a "Modern" problem? Or has there been a great poverty for a verry loong time?

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Ikuru

Thanks.
I dont doubt The English did allot of bad to India.

skell

That's not too encouraging - damned if you do and damned if you don't.

I suppose that's why so many need to believe that there's something better after life on this planet.

DianeN.

I wonder if I'm the only person that actually liked Jaipur. Being in a car, and staying away from touristy areas probably helped avoid beggers...but I enjoyed the city itself and thought it was well organized and quite a pretty city.

I have good memories of Jaipur. My Indian friend that I traveled with had a business contact in Jaipur (she sells indian paintings on marble) so we went to those people's house and had tea...then looked through their workshop. They also have a bookstore in the palace...so we spent time in there...they were so nice. Gave my daughter a Japanese translation of a book on Rajasthan over cold drinks. They also recommended places to go shopping that were far off the tourist trail (I think that really upset our driver, though!)

We went to that touristy Rajastani restaurant (name fails me) but enjoyed it so much....especially knowing that it was touristy for all the Indians, and not just for foreigners. Sort of like a Disneyland of Rajastan. We took a bull cart drive around with the children, watched dancing, ate more food than I've ever eaten since, etc. Was great fun...sort of a different experience from everything we had done up till then.


We were tired of sightseeing by that point in our trip. We spent quite a long time in the palace. There was some sort of ceremony going on with children...where the palace gave food to some children...with the King of Jaipur watching. Tourists were taking lots of pictures of the singers...but my friend recognized the King...so I got his picture instead. There were some ladies doing henna painting there...and we spent a long time hanging out with them. They were so beautiful and so funny...they checked our bags for the things that we had bought (the tee shirts at the Palace shops were MUCH cheaper than where our driver had taken us).

I thought the people in Jaipur were nice. I thought the ride getting there from Ajmer was about the most frightening thing I've ever done....the traffic was so heavy with trucks speeding down the wrong side of the freeway straight at you that I felt for sure we would die!! First thing I did when I got to our hotel was order a big beer. The hotel we stayed at had a cool, relaxed garden. I wouldn't have minded staying there another couple of days.