The Beggar Blog

No, I am not obsessed with the down trodden and the poor in this country. So, if my previous post was about the 'bais' and this about the beggars, that doesn't mean I have developed some sort of liking towards the backward class. It is just that I am getting to observe some newer sides of the society.

When as a child the first time I would have seen a beggar, the first impression would have been less of annoyance or pity, but more of curiosity, 'Why doesn't he earn it on his own instead of asking for it?' Surprisingly, that's a question for which even today I am finding an answer. Although the beggar community constantly keeps on trying to give me reasons, like I am blind, lame, old etc, but then they are hardly reasons. I have seen disabled people working, selling stuff in trains, polishing shoes or any other small business. So although the reasons might be genuine in some cases; but in a vast majority, they are just fraud marketing.

So let’s face it, begging is a profession. The purchases in this segment are impulse based. Somewhat the same as you spend your money on an alpenliebe or hajmola candy. You have never planned it before hand, it takes a fraction of a second to make a purchasing decision and the satisfaction just lasts for a minute or two and then it’s all forgotten. Now, coming back to my first memory of beggars, I remember my parents telling me to ignore them and that they are just a bunch of lazy people who don't want to work and earn money sitting. At that time it was difficult to digest the orders to ignore a poor man who was looking so pathetic, but with time I evolved and hardened my attitude towards them. But surprisingly they evolved too and changed their sales strategies. By the time I got comfortable with ignoring a lazy man sitting with a cup, they had poor children and women 'touching' you in railway station platforms or traffic light to get the money out of you in annoyance.

As an impulse, it might seem that for a business model that demands just one or two rupees from your pocket, spending that much is worth it to get rid of the sleazy stinking person standing in front of you. But then lately they too realized that this aggressive 'push' strategy was actually a mistake and that you can't fight with your customer's ego. So they changed that too. Now they are using 'pull' strategies, that is we don't want to beg, we are not beggars, we agree with you that it is a profession of lazy burdens on the planet, but what can we do, circumstances have led us to do this. But it is only momentary. The moment we get over it, we will be back in business, working hard to get back on our lives.

Now that sounds more convincing, but how are they doing it? On traffic light a woman approached me with a doctor's prescription saying she needed money for her husband's medicines. I would have given her money, and then I noticed that the date on the receipt was two months old. I asked her, why don't you update this, it would fetch you more money. She said nothing and turned away to the next vehicle! But then I realized it was a good strategy and she could have fooled anyone and many other beggars would be using the same at other traffic lights in other cities. But interestingly there is a clear cultural divide between beggars of metros and beggars of tier 2 cities. The Delhi beggars have evolved to such convincing ways, while beggars in my Bharuch are still relaxing on platforms with a cup in hand.

Whatever may be the case, every time a beggar approaches, I (and I am sure that must be the case with all of you) feel hard to convince myself to ignore that guy. On one hand I might be refusing a person really needing money, and on the other I might be encouraging such a profession. But then how many times have you heard a beggar dying of hunger. It is the hard working man who is too proud to beg that dies out of sickness or hunger. And what convinced me to this was a little incident a friend told me. She believed in 'you give a man a fish and you feed him for once and you teach him how to fish, you feed him forever theory' and hence when a girl approached her for money, gave her an address where she would get work . The girl asked, how much would this pay in a month.

"Two thousand", she replied.

"I make five thousand per month”, and went away.