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Mumbai beggars earn Rs 180 crore a year

Beggars in this metropolis earn Rs 180 crore a year, the state legislative council was informed on Wednesday.

DNA Web Team

Updated : Nov 19, 2013, 11:17 PM IST

Updated at 1.11 am, Thursday

MUMBAI: It’s a question the middle class asks every time a hand is stretched out piteously at a traffic signal, on a train, on the street. Is this a genuine case or a member of a syndicate?

According to Social Justice Minister Dharmarao Baba Atram, Mumbai’s beggars collectively earn a whopping Rs180 crore every year, or about Rs50 lakh a month.

Atram told the legislative council on Wednesday, “Most of them are fit and fine, yet do not work for a living. They just beg. The government is thinking of bringing them under the Employment Guarantee Scheme.”

The last head count of beggars, carried out in 1971, pegged their population at 55,000. But Vilas Avchat of the Shiv Sena, who initiated the discussion in the council, said the figure is much higher.

According to Avchat, the government had banned beggary in 1959, but an amendment in 1964 gave licences to beggars. Since then, he said, the number of beggars in the city has been rising.

“In 1963, it was 20,000, and in 2004, it went up to 3 lakh,” he said. Quoting from a 2004 survey, he also claimed that the number of beggars born in Mumbai is just 2 per cent. “They beg near airports, railway stations, cinema halls, and tourist spots. Most of them harass foreign tourists. Their daily income is around Rs200 to Rs225,” he said.

Atram disagreed with Avchat’s statistics but said the law would be amended to remove beggars from the city and bring them under the EGS.

-- Sanjay Sawant

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