| Font Size |
The Delhi High Court is hardly gung-ho about “Jai Ho”. The judges see the Oscar-wining film’s storyline as, at best, commonplace. “Slumdog Millionaire may be important for people abroad but not for us, for whom poverty is sadly an everyday sight,” a Division Bench led by Justice Badar Durrez Ahamed said on Monday in reply to a lawyer’s graphic accounts on how the film contained true-to-life scenes about children pushed into begging.
Hearing a petition on the growing number of beggars in Delhi, the Bench said the right formula would be to “eliminate poverty” from the streets, and not “hide” them in a city busy “dressing up” to host the Commonwealth Games next year. Calling begging a “human problem” — “a combined result of poverty and the presence of criminal gangs who exploit the poor” — the court asked the Delhi government’s Social Welfare Department to reveal its plan to rid the Capital of public begging.
In reply, Delhi government’s counsel Mukta Gupta filed a written report annexed with the minutes of an advisory committee meeting held on November 24, 2008, which said that a three-member panel has been formed to draft a “new legislation” against begging specially meant for Delhi.
The Capital till date depends on a 50-year-old law borrowed from the tinsel town: the Bombay Prevention of Begging Act, 1959.
“The Social Welfare Department felt it better to have a separate law for Delhi,” says minutes of the meeting signed by Joint Director (Social Welfare) B R Singh. “We found that 17 other states have enacted their own laws.”
The document placed before the court says a three-member committee comprising S N Singh (Dean, Delhi University), Mahesh Sharma (District Social Welfare Officer), and S M Ali (Welfare Officer) has been set up for this purpose.
The main report, prepared by Senior Superintendent (Social Defence) R P Kukreti listed various means so far taken to combat begging, primarily the sanction received from Lieutenant Governor Tejendra Khanna for two mobile courts to book beggars. “The Finance Department has approved/sanctioned two mobile courts,” the document states. “The Lieutenant Governor has approved the setting up of the courts with a Special Metropolitan Magistrate, one stenographer and a probationary officer.
“The Social Welfare Department has further invited tenders for hiring 13 vehicles for anti-begging operations in Delhi.”
It also noted that a biometric machine to identify repeat offenders has been set up at the rehabilitation centre in Kingsway Camp. “We also maintain a database since January 2008,” the report said. It promises a “full-fledged” awareness campaign against begging to start within the next three months.
Delhi’s beggar story
2,232 beggars apprehended
1,378 released by court
986 committed/transferred to beggar homes
107 inmates in beggar homes till December 2008
(2008 statistics as per Social Welfare Department)
Discuss this story on expressindia forums
|
|
Its wrong to tackle it as a pure law and order problem and rounding up beggars.The root cause,as the judges observed is poverty.Identify the rural areas from where the beggars come.Normally there are some villages that take to begginbg,at the behest of gangs.Invest in infrastructure and provide jobs in these villages.In short,implement the suggestion of Mahatma Gandhi and Past president Abdul Kalam and develop the villages.Once you have jobs and a decent living in your village,who will want to resort to begging in cities.Its pathetic that even after 60 years of SELF RULE,we have poverty that leads to begging.
While there is no denying the povery in India,it is a fact that hard hearted anti social elements have stepped in to make a fast buck. Truth is most of the children found begging on streets, trains and bus stops are put there by the beggars' mafia after either maiming them at a young age,kidnapping them or worse.They are then trained to evoke pity from bystanders. Targets for collection are set depending on the area they are put to work. Severe thrashings are common if targets are not met. Look around and you will find that most child beggars are within earshot and visual range of a couple of adult beggars who prevent them from escaping. Every kind hearted bystandard who contributes to such a beggar ends up perpetuating the menace. The begging gangs are also in cahoots with the law enforcement authorities, who allow them to carry on with begging without using any violence else 'permission' to beg will be denied....of course for a 'fee'! Time to end this menace!