False Narratives, Real Suffering

How Dominant Class Myths Shape India's Begging Crisis

By Jyoti Kalash

Beggars are a highly visible but one of the most neglected groups in India. | Source: Youtube (D-World Explorer)

Highly visible yet deeply neglected, beggars in India's urban spaces represent a unique form of marginalisation. Narratives blaming individual choices for begging, prevalent among India's dominant classes, mask the systemic failures that perpetuate this crisis. These myths effectively shield the state and society from their responsibility to protect the vulnerable.

The very existence of the beggars who are disadvantaged and unsupported by an unequal socioeconomic system and their efforts to negotiate with their circumstances is viewed by the dominant classes as a ‘public’ nuisance and burden on ‘their’ resources and ‘their’ spaces.

It is important to examine the prominent social narratives about beggary that have been constructed, propagated and consumed by these dominant socioeconomic groups and the cited rationale behind them for veracity.

It assumes further relevance as they are also mirrored in the punitive legal discourse against beggary that is sustained by a criminal justice system which is largely peopled by members of these dominant groups.

These narratives construct beggars as a blot on the aesthetic beauty of the cityscape due to their visibility. For instance, the drive to hide them to make the landscape “world-class” for the tourists during the Commonwealth Games in 2010 had found legal sanction in the erstwhile Delhi law criminalising beggary.

Though the Delhi High Court (2018) and Jammu & Kashmir High Court (2019) have declared the sections criminalising beggary as unconstitutional and violative of the fundamental rights guaranteed in the Indian Constitution, similar laws allowing for the criminalisation and incarceration of beggars are still in force in most parts of India.

Hence, the ones who are the most in need of social security continue to be herded away out of the sight and mind of the upper classes, to sanitise their field of vision and assuage their moral conscience.

Another significant assumption that shapes the dominant discourse around beggars is that they beg because they are lazy and have a preference for idleness. The dominant classes view begging as parasitic behaviour in that the beggars are a drain on the country’s resources because of their choice not to be economically productive.

To see beggars as lazy, idle or not self-sufficient enough frames them as not aligned with the middle-class neoliberal values of participation in the free market, competition and career advancement.

Census 2011 exposed a systemic failure:

21% of India's beggars hold senior secondary qualifications, yet lack access to jobs.

A 2019 study of the employment histories of beggars in Delhi and Mumbai suggests that most people who beg held multiple jobs (in the formal and informal sectors) before they turned to begging and that this was true of men as well as women – including transgender women – and of both able-bodied persons as well as those with disabilities.

Study about the employment history of beggars

Another study indicates that 99% men and 97% women start begging due to abject poverty, distress migration from rural villages and the unavailability of employment.

The various reasons the beggars have provided for turning to beggary include poverty, unemployment, under-employment, displacement, loss of income, hereditary occupation, illiteracy, lack of skill development, sexual harassment of women at workplace, violence, widowhood, natural or man-made disasters, family disorganisation and lack of support, lack of adequate provision for treatment and social rehabilitation of the disabled, elderly, sick and those suffering from substance use disorder.

Groups that have been historically marginalised in the Indian social system are disproportionately represented in the begging population. 24.11% of the total begging population belonged to the Scheduled Castes though they comprised 16.6% of the total Indian population. (Census 2011).

24.92% of the total population of beggars in India belonged to the Muslim community though they comprised 14.2% of the total population. (Census 2011). More than 39% of beggars in India were more than 60 years in age. (Census 2011).

Many among them were daily wage labourers who can no longer earn due to old age and accompanying ill health. Despite a majority of them needing special care, the lack of state and family support forces them to beg for sustenance.

In the National Capital Region, persons with disability constituted nearly 30% of the begging population. (Census 2011). This can be attributed to a complete failure of the state to provide economic, vocational and medical support to the disabled.

Very meagre amounts assigned as disability pension/allowance in various states are also rendered inaccessible in many cases for the intended beneficiaries as the additional burden is put on them of navigating red-tapism and bureaucratic corruption to avail it.

Moreover, the imputation of criminality on the disabled beggars is also signified by a widespread but empirically unsubstantiated middle-class belief that the beggars often mutilate themselves to get more alms by manipulating public sympathy. This essentially victim-blaming narrative robs the disabled beggars of their sense of self-esteem and worth.

Circumstances such as those mentioned above constrain a person to beg as their desperate last resort in order to earn their livelihood and survive in the absence of any other viable alternative.

Another popular middle class myth the extent of which is grossly exaggerated despite lack of substantial empirical evidence for the same is of the prevalence of criminal syndicates among beggars. This narrative frames the beggars as organised criminals who must be engaged in drug smuggling, child trafficking, exploitation etc.

The Delhi Police (Crime Branch) concluded after two months of investigation in 2016, “As far as our findings suggest, there is no such begging mafia in Delhi.”

Statement by Delhi Police on Begging Mafia

Criminality is imputed on the beggars to construct them as the enemies of the ‘public’ to conveniently relieve the guilt of the dominant caste and class groups.

Harsh Mander, a human rights activist said that the perception is “manufactured by the middle class to legitimise their indifference.”

Begging has been an age-old tradition in India and has derived its cultural sanction across the philosophies of various religions. However, its criminalisation, beginning in colonial times, and the stigma assigned by the neoliberal discourse to even the most non-aggressive and voluntary nudge towards economic redistribution, damages the self-worth of the beggars and for many, it exacerbates the vicious cycle of substance use, mental health issues and poverty.

A closer examination of existing data reveals that beggary is not a result of idleness, but can be seen as an active engagement with one’s limiting circumstances and a “practice of resilience”.

K. Swanson's conceptualisation of Begging

Moreover, the employment of the coercive power of police against the beggars can be seen as a bid to hide from public view the evidence of the state's failure to provide work to those who are ready to work and to provide social security and rehabilitation to those that the ‘welfare state’ claims to protect.

Through these dominant narratives, the beggars are devalued and dehumanised so that their bodies can be constructed as disposable. These narratives effectively work to disguise the failure of the state and the larger society in guaranteeing the fundamental rights of even its most visible marginalised population.