Shillong, March 21: Begging is one of the serious social issues faced by India. In most part of India the moment you stop your car at the traffic light you see a dirty looking women with a child in her arm, or a boy with running nose or a handicapped old man come running to you. Railway stations, metro stations, tourist spot, markets places, religious temples and other crowded places are mostly the soft targets. And mostly out of fear of curse by god, out of sheer pity or out of irritation we tend to give them some coins or money and shoo them away.
Poverty is real but not begging in bigger cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Noida, Kolkata etc there is a begging gang who run this racket as a profession, these gangs have their own gangs leaders and each leaders allot a particular territory for a group of beggars and the day’s earnings are shared among them. The gang leaders keep the bigger share.
It is found that most of the times all the family members are involved in begging and they have children and these children also begs. It is strange but true that some of these beggars earn in thousands and lakhs, much more than a normal middle class worker. In major cities these beggars are trained to beg and look real. Sometimes our heart melts when we see a youth woman holding her tiny baby, begging on the streets.
In most cases, the baby is found sleeping. This is a scam. Many sting operations have revealed that babies are rented to give credibility to begging. Sometimes, babies are drugged for the entire day so that they look sick and they can be easily carried from one area to another by the young women mother. Some of the young beggars also become anti-social elements, they get into drugs.
To buy drugs they start begging first, then slowly graduate to pick pocketing and then move onto bigger scams like robbing and killing. Young girls beggars also move on to prostitutions, thus bringing about a rise in HIV cases. Most of these beggars are Bangladeshi few are India. The KHNAM State Youth Wing has carried out a survey of major places in the city and it is surprising to see the growth of beggars in a state where begging never existed.
Without being notice beggars are increasing in numbers in the city and no one ask them for identification, which could be a major security threats to the region and the state. This also contributes to increase in illegal immigrations in the state. In major cities government of India have initiated steps to eradicate begging, but since it has already been allowed to grow not much success has been achieved.
If we the public and the government turn a blind eye to the issue time will come when eradication would be a mere dream. The KHNAM State Youth Wing would therefore urge upon the government and the district administration to take stringing steps on the matter. To eradicate begging and to ensure that it does not gain momentum as citizen of the state, it is our moral responsibility to stop this menace before it grows, and the best way is to stop giving alms.
It might seem that we are very heartless in not giving money to a little child begging on the street, but this is one step that we can take to prevent begging. If all of us come out and taken a pledge not to give a single penny to any beggar, irrespective of their need. The KHNAM therefore calls upon all citizen of the state to work together to ensure that this anti – social elements is not allowed to mushroom into bigger scamps.
