Begging in India

Probably, I felt most guilty and ashamed during my internship when encountering beggars who asked me for money. Despite coming to India every few years and experiencing this every time, I can never get used to it. I would always be asked when I’m in a group—with my co-workers or with my family (when I visited Delhi on weekends). Either way, the group around me would take me away and refuse to make eye-contact with the beggars. In one instance, a group of kids were so desperate that they snatched my food right out of my hands and passed it around to share with each other.

Both my co-workers and my family believe that giving money to the poor, especially poor children, is useless because those children actually work for and pass the money on to someone else. Begging is sometimes done by organized gangs, and beggars can often disfigure or alter their appearance to get more money. Or, they use the money to buy drugs. In addition, if you give money to one person, often many more follow you around and keep asking for more. Therefore, most of the people I’ve met to India normally ignore the beggars.

When I googled this issue online, all the sites recommend to not give money to the poor for these same reasons. One also mentions that the best way to uproot begging is if all people stop passing out money and “let the government continue with its poverty alienation” schemes” to help the poor.

I still am confused about what is the right thing to do. Although I realize that some of these perceptions are valid, it would clearly take at least several years for the government to develop effective policies to help the poor—do we just ignore those in need in the meantime? And even though giving money isn’t as sustainable as providing employment, healthcare access, etc, it will take many years of development and many funds to create programs such as these to support millions of India’s poor.