Begging in Rural India and Bangladesh

Abstract

This paper makes a case for seeing poor people’s experiences of begging as a living strategy propelled by poverty, economic insecurity, ill-health and ageing. Using in-depth interviews with men and women from eastern India and northern Bangladesh, it stresses the narrative accounts of the migrants, their tales of travelling to various destinations and the significance of the remittances they earned. Through these accounts, the aim is to show the resourcefulness and agency required to engage in begging. Begging may be necessary to better respond to food and cash hardships in poor landless households in rural settings. It is neither a deliberate act of avoiding work nor an institutional tradition. An old man got on the bus from Gaibandha to Chittagong, in northwest Bangladesh. He paid his fare, but the conductor did not allow him to take a seat, so he crouched in a small space alongside the bus engine for the long overnight journey. Some passengers laughed at him. No one offered him a seat. He told us that he was on his way to beg. He had been doing this work for the last 12 years, making trips at least once a month. He said that Chittagong and Sylhet were good places to make a living because residents were generous and kind. When he got to Chittagong, he spent three hours each day begging, going house to house. On Thursdays and Fridays, he sat near the mosque all day. When he had earned a few hundred taka, he gave the money to the imam of the mosque for safe-keeping. He told us that he had to make a living from begging since his sons refused to offer support. He often experienced hostility during his onward and return journeys, as we had witnessed. 1