archive: Making a difference
Making a difference
Shantanu Guha Ray
Outlook
July 19, 1999
Title: Making a difference
Author: Shantanu Guha Ray
Publication: Outlook
Date: July 19, 1999
Introduction: Dignity, not alms, is what Shyam 'Pagla' given
Calcutta's beggars. Bandhopadhyay has walked Calcutta's streets for
35 years, collecting information and rehabilitating more than 24,000
beggars.
Every morning, a frail figure emerges from one of the soot-laced
houses of Howrah's Salkia neighbourhood (a suburb of Calcutta) that
lies close to the river Hooghly. Backfiring double-deckers and
belching lorries move menacingly past the dhoti-clad man, busy
attending to a skeletal human on the side-walk. He offers her food
and a starched cloth, before shifting to a group fighting for bread
from a portly Marwari come to enjoy his morning massage at the nearby
ghat. He knows more than half of them in a city which has an
estimated 75,000 beggars. He is Shyam Bandhopadhyay. His is not a
rags to riches story. In fact, it's nothing beyond rags.
'I see a beggar as a human being and not a strange creature to be
avoided," says the man who has spent more than 35 years walking the
streets of this metropolis, collecting personal data and, in the
process, rehabilitating more than 24,000 beggars. Some have opened
shops while others have picked up jobs as maids. Once he wrote
revolutionary poetry in college and even managed a clerk's job with
the State Transport Department. But his empathy for beggars
eventually cost him all-his job, family and home. It didn't deter
him. His handful of friends fondly call him Shyam Pagla-Shyam the
madman.
It was a small incident that triggered off Shyam's benevolent streak.
Informed by neighbours during a game of soccer that his father was
dying, he rushed home. "I was shocked. My father was lying on the
floor. He could not speak but just lifted a finger, pointing towards
the iron safe. It seemed he was telling me that the safe was empty..
I realised that if I did not pick up a job, I would have to beg." A
few years later, Shyam accidentally met two-time Congress legislator
Mahadev Mukherjee begging on the platforms of Sealdah station. "It
was then that I decided to take the plunge."
A welcome one since Calcutta, teeming with its 13-million population,
has beggars clustering around its temples, ghats, streets and office
complexes. A typical day for Shyam starts at his small free clinic at
Salkia, which he runs with the help of a qualified doctor. Then he
travels across the river to Calcutta where he walks for long hours to
meet newcomers and check the status of the rehabilitated ones. He has
set up the world's only Beggar Bureau, compiling fascinating research
material on the world's largest beggar population.
His research material shows that more than 25 per cent of the city's
beggar population has proper bank accounts with savings crossing the
Rs 25,000 mark. An estimated 14 per cent have bought land in the
countryside while more than 75 per cent have a daily income of Rs 50.
The study further reveals that 65 per cent of the beggar community
comprises the disabled, leprosy patients and the old, of which an
estimated 7.89 per cent take to begging because of lack of jobs.
"It may seem that the beggars are a happier lot but reality shows
something else. Begging is extremely humiliating," says Shyam, whose
efforts to rehabilitate young, female beggars as maidservants earned
him accolades from the city's intelligentsia. But the state
government has constantly rejected Shyam's findings, maintaining that
the city's beggar population was a little less than 20,000. As a
result, Shyam continues to depend on donations from friends. "I don't
care. I don't need funds from international agencies. What I am
looking for is minimum security and marginal prestige for these
hapless people. And I am certain no government-either in Bengal or in
Delhi-has the time for it."
In a life dedicated to destitutes, Shyam's last wish also has a tinge
of benevolence. Folded inside his starched dhoti is a small note that
reads: "I hereby authorise the Indian government to sell my skeleton
to a foreign hospital and spend the proceeds for the welfare of
beggars."
Want to lend a helping hand to one who lends his to others? Just
write to Shyam Bandhopadhyay, Beggar Research Bureau, 95/1, Sri
Aurobindo Road, Salkia, Howrah, West Bengal.
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