See where our sympathies flow. A whopping ₹ 21.5 thousand crore of this goes directly to individuals through informal channels who shed a few drops of tear, genuine or acting. Only 10% (3.3k crore) of it goes to formal giving like PM/CM Relief Funds, NGOs, and crowdfunding platforms.

We, the sympathetic ordinary Indians, donate more than ₹ 34,000 crore, or $5.1 billion, every year. To be precise, it was 34,242 crore in 2017, says the Everyday Giving (EG) Report of Sattva Consulting, Bangalore, a study supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rohini Nilekani Foundation. The figures are also all most supported by Bain & Company in its India Philanthropy Report, 2023, which puts it at 32,700 crore in FY22. The total private donations in India in 2022 were INR 1,05,000 crore, reports Bain & Company, a top global management consulting firm.

On the other hand, we need only ₹ 10,000 crore to make India begging-free. There is no need to depend on government funding. There is no need to donate every year without any visible or measurable impact. By converting just 1% of our private donations per year into social impact investments, we can make India begging-free once and for all in 10 years.

Will the beggars work?

Yes, they do. Don't believe in our words. Come and visit Beggars' Corporation to see and feel it. Just 12 beggar-turned-entrepreneurs earned a revenue of INR 70,60,148 in 7 months of FY23. In fact, the beggars work harder than you or me. Living and sitting in the open at one place all day long, braving heat, rain, and cold, is something we cannot think of. They know the art of selling better than us; they sell no product or service, yet they make us cough up a few bucks, willingly or not. Moreover, they don’t feel ashamed or give up, no matter how much we may illtreat them.

Why are they begging instead of doing any dignified work? The answer is a counter-question: Why do thousands of graduates, post-graduates, and engineers apply for Group D posts in railways? When millions of educated youth without Godfathers do not get a job or bank loan for business, how do you think these illiterate homeless folk can get one?

Begging is not ‘their’ problem, but ours as a society. Extreme poverty, the unavailability of round-the-year decent paying work to meet the basic needs, helplessness, and a lack of self-confidence force them to beg. Once we address these needs, why will one refuse to lead a dignified life? If not for them, at least for the better future of their children.

We agree that all the beggars are not helpless and poor. Like any community or profession, here you can also find deviations: millionaire beggars, conmen, drug peddlers, child traffickers, fakes, or super actors. Once we start identification and verification and make I-Cards mandatory for the beggars, the fake beggars will vanish overnight.

The Experiment called Beggars Corporation

Imagine how the system would have laughed at Muhammad Yunus, who started a bank – Grameen Bank in 1978 in Bangladesh to give no-collateral loans to the poor! After 28 years, the world accepted and honored his experiment of ‘Banking with Conscience’ in the form of the Nobel Prize and called him "Banker to the Poor". Not to be surprised, out of his 75 lakh borrowers, more than a lakh were beggars, and they all repaid the loans.

“Instead of simply giving them a charitable donation that would be a one-shot cash infusion, the bank decided to lend money to those who go door-to-door asking for money. The idea was to turn them into traveling salespeople." - said Yunus in his famous 2008 Stanford speech and added, “The project now lends to more than 1,00,000 beggars, and nearly all the loans are paid back in full.”

We are taking the experiment a few steps ahead in Varanasi through Beggars Corporation with more precaution and a conservative approach. Instead of giving away loans, we Motivate-Train-Guide-Handhold them in groups under the supervision of our skilled volunteers. We know no one can do everything, but everyone can do ‘Something’. Those Somethings of many can be combined into a Great Thing. It took us six months—from February to July 2021—to motivate one lady beggar to work. But after that, a small group of beggar families working part time could produce and sell cotton bags worth ₹ 5.54 lakhs between October 2021 and March 2022.

You will be shocked to know how much we invested. A bootstrapped amount of just ₹ 10,000. Ours is a market-driven model where we create some samples, take the orders first, then produce and supply, get the payment, and reinvest. The biggest investment was our faith in our dream.

Don’t Donate, Invest

Charity breeds poverty and dependency; investment cultivates responsibility and self-reliance. Productive utilization of our donations or charity is important to create a system for Work, Profit and Reinvestment. Recall the statement from the 1885 novel ‘Mrs. Dymond’ by Anne Isabella Thackeray Ritchie, which is widely quoted by welfare economists: “If you give a man a fish, he is hungry again in an hour. If you teach him to catch a fish, you do him a good turn.”

But what is the guarantee that the beggars will not fail in business? That doubt we impose on every first-generation entrepreneur or ambitious young talent while rejecting his loan application in the banks. But we didn’t doubt Nirav Modi, Vijay Mallya, or Mehul Choksi.

Anyway, what do we get in return when we donate to the beggars? Not even Punya. We feed him for a day and don’t bother if he sleeps hungry the next day. Our donations encourage more people to beg, destroy the work culture, promote all the nuisances attached to begging, create a burden on society, and make lakhs of people dependent on our mercy forever. What’s wrong if we invest in them and give the beggars a chance?

Chandra Mishra

Founder, Beggars Corporation, Varanasi

chandramishra@beggarscorporation.com

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