Beggars; What is the proper response?<\/p>\n
JAKARTA (JP): There are some sights that one can never
\nproperly get used to. In my case, it is the sight of leper-
\nbeggars, limbs twisted, digits stunted, eyes rolling heavenward
\npleadingly as they hunch or lie on the ground at intersections in
\nJakarta.<\/p>\n
I was thinking about this recently and cast my mind back to
\nthe time about a year ago when the President made a speech to the
\nurban Poor Consortium and its followers at Senayan. Abdurrahman
\n\"Gus Dur\" Wahid flatly rejected any lifting of the ban on becak,
\nthose non-polluting three-wheeler pedicabs still commonly found
\nbeyond Jakarta. Another avenue for the poor to make an honest
\nliving closed off, I thought. No wonder so many turn to begging.<\/p>\n
I had just read a report on this speech when my taxi
\napproached a red light. The weather was vile, rain falling like
\nstair rods and there on the ground at the lights I could see a
\nleper stretched across one lane on his side, a stunted arm thrown
\nskywards in abject supplication. We stopped a yard or two from
\nhim, and he hauled himself over, face contorted with misery.<\/p>\n
One can affect unawareness, feign indifference or summon up
\nsome other defense against such entreaties. And go away feeling a
\nsomewhat lesser person, perhaps. I duly passed a little money
\nthrough the window, knowing that in such cases your contribution
\nwill never be enough.<\/p>\n
As the taxi moved away I was left to wonder, and not for the
\nfirst time, about the proper response to such situations and to
\nbeggars in general.<\/p>\n
Indeed, is there one? I thought of Dorothy Wordsworth who
\ncoined the phrase, \"the rant and cant of the staled beggar\", as
\nshe complained of the mendicants she encountered in England's
\nbeautiful Lake District. And of that fine humane man, the
\nScottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson railing against \"the gross
\nparody of gratitude\" he thought he saw in beggars.<\/p>\n
What would they have made of this beggar's wretchedness, his
\nground-down, eyeball-rolling abjection? Could they have gone by
\non the other side?<\/p>\n
Perhaps. And sometimes, like most of us, I do too, but not
\nwithout feeling some anger. When I see such outcasts, \"the
\nwretched of the earth\", abasing themselves near or even next to
\nplaces of worship a little red mist begins to form before my eyes
\nas indeed it does when the window of a BMW or Mercedes slides
\nopen a little way and a coin is flicked out or a note dropped
\nlike so much cigarette ash. Or hear people like the British
\nConservative grandee Sir George Young moan about having to step
\nover beggars when leaving the opera.<\/p>\n
But in truth I find something of a Stevensonian or
\nWordsworthian reaction coming on when sound-limbed beggars,
\nusually women carrying their children as little bundles of moral
\nblackmail, paw at me or stick their bowls right under my nose
\nwith a grunt. It is nonsense to equate the wretch on the ground
\nin the stair rod rain, ruined limbs and all, with these women,
\npoor though they may be. Nor can I sympathetically equate them
\nwith the many blind beggars here that eke out such a mournful
\nexistence.<\/p>\n
The beggars of Jakarta are not, I think, the beggars of India,
\nsome of whom have been deliberately mutilated to create an
\n\"authentic\" look. The tiny blind woman on the train the other
\nmorning, her voice so spectral it hardly carried across the width
\nof the carriage. Where would she turn if not to the more generous
\nmembers of the public--and years of using all manner of Jakarta
\npublic transport have taught me that the most generous Jakartans
\ntend to use lower cost means. As is the case with so many,
\nofficialdom hardly seems to notice her except when from time to
\ntime the bureaucrats declare war on the unfortunate and sweep
\nthem off the streets. Out of sight, out of mind. To some minor
\nGulag or workhouse to teach them \"productive\" skills?<\/p>\n
I really don't know what the answer to my question is. What is
\nthe proper response to beggars? All I can say is that it surely
\ncannot be found in making war on the blind, the halt, the lame,
\nthe cruelly deformed.<\/p>\n
-- David Jardine<\/p>", "url": "https:\/\/jawawa.id\/newsitem\/beggars-what-is-the-proper-response-1447893297", "image": "" }, "sponsor": "Okusi Associates", "sponsor_url": "https:\/\/okusiassociates.com" }