Menacingly Irritiating

Beggars! All around and everywhere in India we can see them. I had been to many other countries, some of them are poorer than ours, and still, I hardly found beggars on the roads as menacingly I find them here.

You name a place & spot them there. On the traffic signals, religious worship spots, picnic spots, bus-stands, railway stations, at times inside the compartments of running trains (even in AC coaches – I fail to understand what the attendants do or they have a share on the alms they get?) and where not? So long, they are not found inside the airports, however, if you happened to go abroad you can find those beggars in the form of security checking constables who literally beg for some dollars or a perfume can.

Beggars - in all forms; young, aged, kids, handicapped, old, eunuchs, you get the most of the variety – all begging for alms. Many a times, it becomes menacingly irritating. Begging is an easy profession. One does not have to read, score marks however, has to work hard. You should present yourself in the ugliest way you can.

Kids and Old ones are the most common types of beggars one can see. This is because, to cash on the sympathy feeling. They are aware they cannot feed them but they breed kids. Perhaps, this is the only entertainment they have with them. So, what to do with the by-product of this entertainment? Instead of treating this as a liability, invest them. Ask them to beg for alms. Sympathy adds and they earn(?) more money!

Old ones either driven out by their own kids or those who willingly take up this profession. Though there are Old Age homes available in numerous numbers in India, I fail to understand whether they are insufficient or these old beggars do not like a life there.

Next in line is a mother with an infant in hand. This is terrible. They knew they cannot feed themselves and how do they keep on breeding. As I said earlier, this is an entertainment and investment in their process. To gain more sympathy, some of the kids are made handicapped forcibly. This is the atrocious things that remain uncaught.

Eunuchs are the pitied ones. They are neglected by our society. They were not given the proper treatment they deserve. For the fault of some one else, they suffer. When they are not even given seats in a bus or train, how can they expect to lead a normal life like going to an office and earn their bread? They end up begging. Considering their blessings as auspicious in one part of India encourage their begging. The only other profession they can think of, to make money, is sex.

To an extent, every religion attributes to this menace. It always maintained that to have a balance, rich has to aid the poor. As days passed, to give alms to poor has become a tool to earn punya. With the growing demands of an average man, he does not have time to calculate his papa or punya. He thinks he is reconciling his sins by giving alms.

Subsequent Governments of India also played a vital in this regard. All of us are aware that Indian Government is a government of subsidies and sops. They give you fish rather than teaching you to fish.

All these had made life easy for beggars and they are on the rise. Why they have to toil hard when they get more by sitting at one place. It is the high time we stopped encouraging beggars instead provide aids to Orphanage or old age Homes. We might end up reducing their numbers.

I have to stop here as I cannot withstand the yelling of our “rapichaikkaran”