Tag: begging

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Slavery in India and how it compares to the world

While browsing the layers that is the internet, I came across Global Slavery Index and found the facts that they’d written about India after research quite intriguing. There are lots of little nuggets there to mull over and think about various ways we ignore, encourage and are okay with slavery in our country. I had hoped this is not true, that it’s fiction, or something that can come under my Tall Tales section, but unfortunately, that is not to be. An excerpt from the report.

How many people are in modern slavery in India?

India is undergoing a remarkable ‘triple transition’, in which economic growth is both driving and is being affected by rapid social and political change. Economic growth has rapidly transformed the country over the past 20 years, including the creation of a burgeoning middle-class. In 1993, some 45 percent of the population were living in poverty; by 2011 that had been reduced to 21 percent.In addition to economic growth, ambitious programmes of legal and social reform are being undertaken right across the board, from regulation of labour relations to systems of social insurance for the most vulnerable.

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A new begging scam on the streets of Bangalore

A few weeks ago, I’d just come out of my gym in RT Nagar when a couple with a child, looking vaguely from somewhere rural approached me. Both of them spoke on how they’d come to Bangalore on train from somewhere in Bihar, called on a job by a contractor had cheated them. Now they were without money and couldn’t go back home. It was late evening and they begged me to give them some money to buy a train ticket for home. They rightly guessed that I spoke Hindi and spoke to me in the same language to emphasis their alieness to this land. At that time, vulnerable and tired, I half fell for it. Deciding not to give money, I took them over to a biryani place nearby and got them some biryani packed for dinner.

104kjhkAsI bought the biryani, I was pretty sure the Rs 150 I was spending on them was scammed off me, but the polite me didn’t know how to say no. The reason I knew it was a scam was because I vaguely remember the same thing happening in Delhi, when I used to live there more than a decade ago. Also the cashier in that biryani restaurant looked like he’d seen that guy before. There was a flicker of recognition in his eyes. Anyway, I paid up and left, feeling vaguely scammed and hoping I see them again so I could confront them.

The same scam was repeated before me, TWICE at the Trinity Circle today. There were two families I saw. A couple with a child, usually 3-7 years of age trailing behind. One of the families was standing a bit off the other and the other had already stopped a lady who give out Rs 100 to the couple in front of me and my friend. We didn’t stop her at that moment.

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