IT BEGGARS BELIEF...

IT BEGGARS BELIEF

OUTSIDE TERGAR MONASTERY

In Danny Boyle’s film Slumdog Millionaire there is a scene about half way through where Jamal Malik, a young boy from the Juhu slums of Mumbai, manages to escape from a camp where young kids are being blinded with acid.  The cruelty of the scene is perhaps a shock and a revelation to western audiences, some of whom are largely unaware of this practice of mutilating young children to be sent out into the streets of cities in India to beg. 

Disquietingly, not all the children who are subjected to these inhumane acts are orphans:  some are actually sold on to ‘syndicate managers’ because of the parents’ (usually single parents’) inability to support an addition to an already large and unmanageable family because of the unremitting pressure of abject and inescapable poverty.

THE SAD STATE OF A BEGGAR IN INDIA

How quickly one becomes used to the sight of these children of the poor, scrabbling about on the streets of Bodh Gaya, the place of Buddha’s enlightenment, situated in India’s poorest and most corrupt state of Bihar in North East India. With the approach of the New Year, thirteen years into the second millennium, it beggars belief that this should be happening in a country that has the world’s tenth largest economy recording the highest growth rates in the world during the mid-2000s.  As with many economies in Asia, the money does not filter down to those who need it, but rather ends up in the pockets of the politicians, the satellite agencies of the government who are meant to be relieving the poverty and the contractors of spurious or ill-conceived projects.

But there are beggars and beggars.  It is not very difficult to tell who the genuine poor are and who the moochers are. There are the genuine derelicts, the mendicants, the South Indian sanyasin, and the women carrying young children and leading a brood of unwashed and ragged toddlers; and then there are the children who are learning very quickly the art of panhandling and pester the tourists. 

HOW CHILDREN ARE USED TO BEG FOR ADULTS

However, the most heart-breaking are the young (mainly) boys intentionally deformed in order to beg.  They are crippled by having bleach injected into their leg joints causing an infection which leaves them disabled or even having to have their legs amputated.  The money they receive is often handed over to ringleaders of gangs. Tourism in India is the main cause of this wicked practice as tourists will often succumb to the sight of a mutilated child and give money.  

Another practice is to kidnap a child and disfigure the child, sometimes with the help of a doctor.  There is no fear of the government as officials are easily paid off by the gangs and left to operate with impunity.  Sometimes there are brokers who will search for young children of impoverished families and promise to have them adopted by wealthy families or to look after them as benefactors running an orphanage so that their future will be secure.  Of course, the parents never know what happens to their children.

Another ploy is for a woman to hire a baby from someone and the money earned from begging is split between them.

Answer: don’t give money to deformed child beggars.  If you must, give to either reputable organisations like Action Aid or Care International.  There are also small charities which contribute to more local issues for the supply of water to villages or to provide free medical facilities for the poor.  In Bodh Gaya there are monasteries providing this service.  Otherwise, use your own judgement and give to the genuine needy, the old and infirm who are alone and without help.

THE PLIGHT OF THE CHILD BEGGARS

Click on the bottom for previous blogs.