A nuisance for neoliberalism

Beggars rounded upby the Corporation herded into a van for transportation to the Communicable Diseases Hospital.-HANDOUT

Let the world-maker loiter and rot If beg and live' be human fate.

Tirukkural; Couplet 1062

IN contrast to the general middle-class hostility to and resentment against beggars, Tiruvalluvar, the Tamil savant, did not hesitate to sympathise with these children of a lesser god 2,000-odd years ago. However, the Corporation of Chennai, governed by the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), which invokes Tiruvalluvar on every other occasion and talks of seeing god in the smile of the poor, launched an intensive drive starting June 7 to ensure that beggars are off the streets and roads in the city. According to Mayor M. Subramanian, the campaign is backed by Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi and Deputy Chief Minister M.K. Stalin. A total of 38 people were picked up on the first day of the crackdown.

Earlier, in the first phase of the campaign, which commenced on April 28, mentally ill people moving around the city were targeted. The helpline set up by the civic body received 451 calls, and 179 people, 121 of them mentally challenged, were rescued and rehabilitated.

While the mentally ill were admitted to the government Institute of Mental Health (IMH), others were sent to old-age homes and care centres run by non-governmental organisations (NGOs) or handed over to their relatives. Some of the rescued were admitted to the government General Hospital in the city. The condition of the rescued persons is being monitored continuously by the Corporation, the Mayor said.

Shortly after a meeting with activists of 18 NGOs on May 24, Subramanian said the Corporation, with the help of the police, would launch a drive against beggars who failed to comply with the June 5 deadline to give up begging. The authorities would secure four categories of beggars children, women, the aged and the physically challenged. Rescued persons would be rehabilitated in coordination with the government agencies concerned and NGOs, he said. The Mayor denied the existence of any organised beggar mafia in the city. About the children carried by some women begging at traffic signals, he said they were either stolen or hired. The babies were sedated in order to draw public sympathy, he maintained. The Mayor claimed that the entire operation is carried out on humanitarian grounds as it is aimed at rehabilitating the beggars and the mentally ill, apart from enhancing the health and hygiene of the city and removing traffic snarls.

Efforts would be made to provide training and employment opportun-ities to the able-bodied persons among the rescued, he said. Our ultimate goal is to ensure that Chennai city is free of beggars, he declared.

But Chennai Corporation is not the first in the State to embark on a campaign against begging. The district administration and the police in Madurai launched a similar drive following a court order on March 26, 2007, calling for strictly implemen-ting the provisions of the Tamil Nadu Prevention of Begging Act, 1945.

Now, after a gap of three years, issues relating to begging have come to the fore though almost all political parties have been maintaining a stoic silence over this sociological problem involving several thousands of the less fortunate. Releasing the report of a fact-finding team that visited the Communicable Diseases Hospital and the IMH in Chennai and the care camp at Melpakkam in Tiruvallur district, A. Marx, State organiser of the People's Union for Human Rights, explained the political and economic context of the Corporation's move.

According to him, there is a link between the recent mass eviction of slum-dwellers from the city and the crackdown on beggars and homeless people. With India emerging as a key player in the global market despite increasing socio-economic disparities, metropolitan areas are boosted as world-class cities with sweeping highways, gleaming buildings and elegant business centres and made attractive for foreign direct investments, particularly in the neoliberal environment.

The Chennai Corporation's drive to get rid of beggars, as part of efforts to create Singara Chennai' [beautiful Chennai], coincides with Delhi's campaign to clear the streets and roads of beggars as the capital city prepares to host the Commonwealth Games, he pointed out.

Rights violated

With an increasingly erratic climate failing agriculture, agrarian workers from Tamil Nadu and other States are making their way into cities to eke out a living in informal sectors. As they pour into Chennai city, with no low-cost or affordable housing, pavements, bus stands and markets become their temporary or permanent shelters. Neither the State government nor the Chennai Corporation has shown any concern for the plight of inter-State and intra-State migrant workers, he said.

Those workers who remained unorganised were severely exploited and in the absence of workplace safety, compensation for loss of lives or limbs was denied or not paid fully, he said. With no livelihood guarantee, especially for those who are differently abled, many of them have taken recourse to begging. It should also be noted that begging is a symptom of poverty, which is the making of the same dominant elite class who are now driving these people out of their last possible survival mechanism, he added.

Marx urged the Mayor to release a White Paper on the Corporation's drive against the mentally ill and beggars. Around 30-40 per cent of the detained persons were migrant labour from other States. Pointing out certain procedural and human rights violations allegedly committed by the authorities of the civic body in detaining them at the IMH, he said a medical team comprising doctors from other States should be invited to examine them. He stressed the need for a clear framework for engaging private institutions in the rehabilitation of the mentally ill.

According to human rights activists, another dimension to the issue is that laws enforced in different States, including Tamil Nadu, to curb begging do not protect beggars. The Tamil Nadu Prevention of Begging Act, 1945, for instance, treats begging as a crime. Its basic premise seems to be that begging is an outcome of choice and not compulsion. The pre-Independence era law calls for the detention and employment of beggars and their dependants in workhouses or special homes, and for the custody, trial and punishment of beggar offenders in the (State of Tamil Nadu).

According to Section 2 of the Act, begging means (i) soliciting or receiving alms in a public place, whether under the pretence of singing, dancing, performing tricks or selling articles or otherwise; (ii) entering on any private premises for the purpose of soliciting or receiving alms; (iii) exposing or exhibiting, with the object of obtaining or extorting alms, any sore, wound, injury, deformity or disease, whether of himself or other person or of an animal; [and] (iv) allowing oneself to be used as an exhibit for the purpose of soliciting or receiving alms.

However, the law has made it clear that earning a livelihood by displaying skills and talents by street artists and performers in the oral tradition, bards, jugglers and street magicians will not come under its purview.

The penalty clauses are stringent: (1) Whoever is found begging shall be punishable (a) on a first conviction, with fine which may extend to fifty rupees or with imprisonment which may extend to one month; (b) on a second or subsequent conviction, with imprisonment for a term which may extend to six months (2) Any police officer may arrest without a warrant any person who is found begging.

The Act enables the magistrate to order detention of able-bodied accused of eighteen [years] or over to a workhouse for a period of not less than one year and not more than three years. It also provides for detention in a special home for a similar period of persons who are not physically capable of ordinary manual labour. Under the Act, the magistrate has the power to release them on a bond executed with or without sureties assuring that the person would abstain from begging.

Higher penalty of detention ranging from three to seven years will be awarded to persons who resume begging after detention and if they are convicted for the second or subsequent time, the detention period will range from three years to 10 years.

In the case of persons, including juveniles afflicted with leprosy and the physically challenged, the law seems to be more inhuman as it provides for indefinite detention in an asylum.

Expressing his views on the Act, K. Elango, the general secretary of the Tamil Nadu unit of the All India Lawyers' Union, said the rehabilitation clause was introduced by the State government through an amendment in 1964. The original Act betrayed the intention of the British rulers to prevent begging and nothing more than that, he said. Although the amendment tried to see beggary as a social problem, it did not offer any comprehensive solution.

Begging cannot be termed an offence. It should be treated as a socio-economic problem, though in metropolitan cities, professional begging is encouraged by some gangsters, he said.

According to him, giving sweeping powers to the police to arrest beggars, the problems in differentiating between street artists who earn a livelihood and those soliciting alms under the pretence of singing, dancing and performing tricks, and levying fine on persons who have nothing to begin with are among the grey areas. He wondered how people selling articles could also be brought under the definition of beggars. On the claim that begging at road signals posed a traffic hazard, he said the problem caused by the alms-seekers was minimal and there were several other major factors distracting drivers.

Official sources, however, point out that ever since 1954, when a camp for beggars convicted by the judicial magistrate was set up at Melpakkam, several rehabilitation measures have been taken by successive governments.

Presenting the policy note for 2010-2011 on the welfare of the differently abled persons during the Budget session in the State Assembly, Karunanidhi recalled that 10 rehabilitation homes for leprosy-afflicted persons were started by the government between 1971 and 1974.

Official sources also claim that the inmates are provided with free board, lodging, clothing, medicine and recreation facilities. They are also trained in weaving, tailoring and shoemaking. With the inmates moving out to live in free environment, many of the camps have only around 50-60 per cent of the sanctioned strength of 400 adults and 25 children, local people say.

In the Melpakkam camp, which is under the control of the Social Welfare Department, there are only 106 inmates, including five women, against the sanctioned strength of 950, including 180 women.

The collapse of some of the old buildings in the camp has resulted in a drastic scaling down of the strength, official sources said. Most of the inmates are in the 50-60 age group and they belong to the southern districts, including Madurai and Ramanathapuram.

Interactions with representatives of NGOs, legal experts, government officials, inmates of the care centres and villagers reveal that contrary to the theories relating to the flourishing beggar industry, which stem from the typical middle-class attitude towards the poor and downtrodden, there are several factors that contribute to the problem in the State, which has 48.63 lakh families below the poverty line. Mass deprivation, abject poverty, disability, illness, inter-State and intra-State migrations owing to failure in business or agriculture and family disputes are some of the major factors.

Discarded by their kin and faced with social stigma, beggars afflicted with leprosy are forced to live in 48 segregated colonies in different parts of the State.

The Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority's second Master Plan claims that Chennai is a city of migrants. The migrants not only come from the surrounding Tamil- and Telugu-speaking areas but also from other parts of the country, it says.

According to P. Banu, childline coordinator of Don Bosco Anbu Illam, seven or eight boys in the 12-16 age group on an average arrive at the railway stations in Chennai and the bus terminus at Koyambedu every day. The boys migrating from other States struggle to find a survival mechanism owing to the language problem, she said. There are several instances of people belonging to other States and other districts in Tamil Nadu bringing their mentally ill relatives to the city and abandoning them before taking the next bus back home. These mentally ill people, particularly women, are subjected to harassment by antisocial elements, NGO activists claim.

The absence of any proper survey of beggars has come in the way of taking up a comprehensive rehabilitation programme. However, some activists claim that their number will run to a few thousands. Children are hired by brokers for Rs.100 for begging, they allege.

Tamil scholars and historians are of the view that hatred towards beggars is an alien phenomenon, as traditional Tamil society has always been tolerant towards the have-nots. According to C. Santhalingam, senior archaeologist, there is historical and literary evidence to show the existence of arachaalai (endowments) during the 10th century A.D. for feeding the poor. Manimekalai, the 6th century Tamil epic, speaks of its heroine using amudhasurabhi, the magic bowl, to feed the poor and needy. Although Puranaanooru, a Sangam Age work, describes begging as a despicable act, it dubs denial of alms a greater insult, he pointed out.