Beggars in a Five-trillion Economy

India’s Prime Minister has promised to make the country a $5-trillion economy by 2027. My knowledge of economics is zilch. Even if I try to learn it, I don’t think I will understand. For example, economists will take the total assets of Mukesh Ambani and mine, calculate the average, and say that my average assets amount to $52 billion, half of Ambani’s $104 billion. Mukesh Ambani’s assets amount to INR 87,31,75,68,00,000. I don’t even know how to count that figure, let alone calculate the average. Even if you find the average of that and my assets [ridiculous suggestion?] and tell me, still the figure will remain beyond my grasp (both literally and metaphorically). [Black monies don’t count in economic stats, I guess.]

But India may become a $5-trillion economy by 2027. Because, as I understand, the average assets of each Indian are calculated the way I described in simplistic terms above. If you google India’s skewed economy, you will understand better what I’m saying. Here is a country that is taking away whatever little that the poor own and giving them all to the affluent making them more affluent so that the country’s GDP-graphs shoot up like ephemeral meteors.

What made me write this post is the increasing number of beggars in my village at a time when my great country is all set to become the leading economy in the world. These beggars all make their rounds fairly early in the morning, from 7 to 8. They know that people will go to work after that. And they are not beggars really. They look like real gentlemen. [There are no ladies yet in that galaxy.] They don’t want alms. They want “help”. Help to treat a child at home or marry off a daughter or look after the sick wife, long-cherished wish to on a pilgrimage… Very poignant tales. Most of them are frauds, I discovered of late. I used to give them rather too generously trusting their tragic stories to some extent. But then, one day I found one of those men in the bar nearby fully drunk. I began to make some enquiries. Soon enough, I came to know that most of these “help”-seekers are all mere alcoholics who don’t want to do any work.

“You help me clean up the garden,” I said to one rather young man who came to seek “help” one day. “Sure,” he said and promised to come the next day. He even fixed the wage as Rs1000 plus breakfast and lunch apart from a couple of teas and snacks in between. I agreed. My garden was going to be spick-and-span, I dreamt.

“Can you give me something to eat?” He asked as he got the smell of chicken being cooked in the kitchen. It was a Sunday when we usually have something special for lunch. Maggie readily agreed to provide food to a hungry man because she had returned from church where that day’s Bible reading was: “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.” [Romans 12:20]

“Can you pack that lunch so that I can share it with my daughter at home?” He raised his demand. Maggie’s heart melted for his hungry daughter. In fact, the man’s name Isho [Malayalam for Jesus] and his rather angelic looks and childlike prattle must have endeared him to Maggie a bit.

I reminded him about the next day’s job as he was leaving. “Sure, you can take my phone number.” He gave me a phone number.

I have never met him after that. The phone number was non-existent. 

There is this old man [in the pic above] who used to come every week meticulously. I gave him Rs 10 on each visit. When he came the other day, Maggie and I were both busy at the back of the house doing some cleaning up in connection with Onam celebrations. Our hands were dirty and so it took a few minutes for Maggie to clean up her hands and go to take a ten-rupee note. We had recognised the beggar’s voice, of course.

As Maggie took a few minutes to get the ten rupees, the beggar became restless and started shouting. He almost became abusive. Then I came to the front-yard and told him that we were working hard so that people like him could eat without working. So he shouldn’t shout here, be patient. In the meanwhile, Maggie handed him the ten-rupee note. He lifted it up holding it by the edge and said to me with unconcealed disdain, “Is it for this that you made so much noise?”

I laughed. I thought he wouldn’t come again. Now he comes twice a week. Really, I’m not exaggerating. This is what makes me want to know what the beggar mentality is. You, reader, are welcome to instruct me on this. My google search didn’t yield anything worthwhile.

Just a few days back, two young men came at about 7.45 am. They all know when to catch the prey at the right time. I was getting ready for breakfast when the doorbell rang. I opened the door to find one ‘guy’ with a ring on one of his ears and the rainbow on his hairs. The other ‘guy’ looked a little more civilised in spite of his spiked-up hairs which looked like my toilet brush and which killed my appetite.

Before giving them the usual Rs100 that I have fixed for all such elite beggars, I asked, “How do you empower students with the money collected like this?” I was reading the name of their organisation from the receipt they gave me which was about empowering students. “We help patients in need to get kidneys, liver and other organs.” What! I was stunned. Was I funding an organ-dealing swindler-mafia?

The two stylish young guys couldn’t even write my name though it is a very common name in Kerala. So I took the receipt book from them and scribbled my name in a couple of seconds. The ‘guy’ with earrings and rainbow head had started humming a song assuming that this old man [I] was going to waste their time by struggling to identify the letters of the alphabet related to my name.

There are a lot more interesting characters in this galaxy.

There was this middle-aged man who came once a moth with religious punctuality. He looked the personification of melancholy. He wanted money to make his monthly pilgrimage to Velankanni [a place in the neighbouring state of Tamil Nadu]. One day I asked him why he wanted to make the pilgrimage with other people’s money. He should work and earn his own money for such religious affairs, shouldn’t he? It’s then he enlightened me with a completely stunning revelation: he was donating the money that I gave him to the Virgin Mary in Velankanni church for the salvation of my soul. I told him explicitly that my soul didn’t require that sort of salvation. He didn’t return after that. But I see him every month in the village with the same old religious melancholy and punctuality. I always suppress the urge to tell him that he should make his pilgrimage to the Church of Our Lady of Sorrows in Kasargod instead of to Velankanni, lest he starts coming to me again asking for money to bribe my favourite idol.

In the end, I request Modiji to make at least a fraction of this country’s trillions and quadrillions [of dollars!] reach these beggars in my village and elsewhere so that people like me can have their breakfast in peace. Why not start yet another project like Pradhan Mantri BekarPrabodhan Yojana [PMBPY] or something of the sort with a picture of Modiji caressing the cheek of some model who poses as a beggar?