Editorial
Alleviating beggary is a pressing task
Time to do something about it on a sustainable basis
STREET beggary, particularly at the city's traffic intersections, has acquired an ungainly ubiquity. It's hazardous for those who practise it along assorted transports pulling up at a signal point and then rushing out when given green light. Children and women are among the most vulnerable. It is also visibly self-degrading as a crippled hand or leg or a blind eye is called attention to by tapping on the window panes, or if these panes are open show it to appeal to the sense of piety of the vehicle passengers. Some of them look the other way, some handing in a small amount.
How much of this begging is unavoidable, and how much habitual and addictive is an interesting matter for sociological study that has hardly received any priority attention. We do not even have any survey of how many beggars there are, what is the rate of their annual increase when driven by rural landlessness and pauperisation. That is where the reversal process should begin by developing growth epicentres to hold the local people to their domicile.
But so casual has been the approach to the problem that often rag to riches stories are spun out to romanticise beggary as an organised and lucrative profession, far too entrenched to be surgically eliminated.
We don't buy into such morbid thinking; for, in our assessment, by allowing beggary to proliferate the way it has, we have only reflected our collective sense of poor self-esteem thereby letting our national image to be demeaned.
In this overall context, it's wee bit good to know that the government has proposed an allocation of Tk. 6.32 crore to undertake a project for rehabilitating beggars by offering them employment, education, training and shelter. This is just a drop in the ocean, but a start all the same which must be built on with far greater allocation of resources for implementing a comprehensive sheltering plan including providing skill and seed money to get started on self-help or co-operative basis. Let it not end the way of relocating them away from the city only to see them return to the streets.
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