So much for the "Super Power" **** hole..hahaha!!!
Hotdog stands won't help you now.
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NEW DELHI - Manju Kumar never set out to be a beggar. But for five months,
since her rickshaw-puller father died of tuberculosis, the vivacious
13-year-old has had little choice but to fall in step with passers-by on
the
roadside, asking for "1 rupee, [for] my problem."
India has an estimated 6 million beggars, the world's largest population.
Lepers and the aged sit outside temples, waiting for handouts. Small
children, their cheeks painted red like circus performers, do somersaults
at
road intersections, hoping for spare change. Widows, the mentally ill and
migrant job-seekers down on their luck wend through New Delhi's chaotic
traffic, tapping on windows, their hands extended.
Beggars have long had an im****tant and socially acceptable role in this
Hindu-majority nation, where handouts to those in need are seen as a way
to
fend off bad luck and gain favor with the gods. But the delicate balance
between alms givers and takers in India is beginning to ****ft as the
country's changing fortunes have driven - or lured - an estimated 100,000
new beggars to India's streets over the past decade.
Traditional panhandlers - including ascetic Hindu holy men, the
handicapped
and nomadic Indian groups who have no traditional trades - now find
themselves joined on the streets by migrant families unable to find work
in
the city, or former menial workers who have decided they can make more
money, with less effort, at street corners, according to social workers.
Widows of indebted farmers who commit suicide are joining in - the
percentage of women and children begging is fast rising - as are the
elderly, the very poor and even educated working people who beg a little
on
the weekends to improve their lifestyles and afford luxuries.
"The categories are changing, and the numbers are increasing," said Sneh
Lata Tandon, head of the Delhi School of Social Work, which last year
finished the first comprehensive survey of beggars in New Delhi in at
least
40 years. And as a result, "the image of a beggar is also changing, and
people feel they're a nuisance."
Tandon's study, based on interviews with more than 5,000 beggars, paints a
vivid ****trait of the growing legions on the capital's streets. Most say
they beg to pay for basics such as food and clothing. Nearly all are
illiterate, and about half live on sidewalks, often in deplorable
conditions. Many say they are begging because they are unable to find
work.
But with many adult beggars taking in as much as $2.50 a day, about the
same
as a day construction laborer would earn at the unofficial city pay rate,
plenty with their hands out on the roadside say they are happy with their
current profession.
Fully 66 percent of New Delhi beggars are now able-bodied, a figure
Tandon's
school estimates to be significantly higher than in the past.
"Beggars tend to earn more than a person doing hard labor," Tandon said.
"It's very alarming. You see even graduates and post-graduates doing it,
supplementing their earnings from low-paid jobs."
In an India where the economy is booming and spending on luxuries is on
the
rise, "people give more im****tance to money" than they once did, the
researcher said. "Before, dignity and labor had value. Now people don't
bother how they're earning money, as long as money is coming in."
Many on New Delhi's streets are undeniably there out of desperation. At an
intersection near the city's central Connaught Place, 13-year-old Kumar
ekes
out a basic living for her family while her mother, sick and traumatized
by
her husband's death, sits watching on a sidewalk nearby.
Kumar earns $1.20 to $1.80 each day begging; her two little brothers, 11
and
6, sell cheap pens in traffic, making a half-penny profit on each. Nearly
70
cents of each day's take goes to buy the family train trans****t to and
from
their rented hut in a remote village outside New Delhi.
"It's only because we're going through hard time that we have to beg,"
says
Kumar, clad in a yellow-green sari and scuffed rubber sandals. "It's very
difficult."
Like most beggars on New Delhi's streets, she has little realistic plans
for
escaping the profession.
"Some day, when I've collected enough, I'll get married," she says. "Then
my
brothers and mother will manage for themselves."
New Delhi's police, out of sympathy and overworked, largely let the family
-
and a half-dozen other beggars performing or beseeching at the same
intersection - work unmolested, despite city laws against panhandling.
But on a recent morning, a motorist annoyed about beggars holding up
traffic
complained to the superiors of the police officer in charge of Kumar's
corner. He dutifully rounded up the child beggars he could catch - and a
half-dozen kids peddling pens and magazines, though not Kumar or her
brothers - and then held the sobbing, pleading group in a police hut for
an
hour, telling them they would be taken to a beggar's shelter in the city
for
three months.
"I keep telling them not to beg." said the officer, who refused to give
his
name. "But they say, 'We were born here, brought up here and we will die
here.'"
The children were eventually released, after the police officer's superior
decided not to send a car to trans****t them to the shelter, the officer
said. Within an hour, they were back to begging.
The city's 11 beggar homes, where people convicted of panhandling can be
sentenced to stay for two to three years, are largely empty. Most of those
admitted, like homeless people picked up in the United States and taken to
shelters, don't adjust well to the regimented lifestyle and walk back to
the
streets at the earliest op****tunity, Tandon said.
As New Delhi prepares to play host to the 2010 Commonwealth Games, a
prestigious Olympic-like s****ting competition, city officials are trying
to
determine how to get the city's estimated 60,000 beggars off the streets,
at
least tem****arily. One plan involves trying to fingerprint and photograph
them, with hopes of boosting the arrest rate for proven multiple
offenders.
Tandon calls the campaign a waste of money, urging vocational and literacy
cl***** instead.
A bigger threat to the profession may come from changing attitudes. As the
number and often the aggressiveness of beggars grows, givers are starting
to
see them as a problem. And "there's a growing awareness that one-time
charity is not going to help," Tandon said.
Still, 81 percent of beggars surveyed on New Delhi's streets last year
said
they faced no problem in their profession. And most, with no other skills
or
options, were unlikely to try anything else.
"People take it as part of life," Tandon said.
Laurie Goering writes for the Chicago Tribune.
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/world/bal-te.beggars16mar16,0,1833937.story
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