For the past year, I have been living two weeks of every month in an upmarket apartment in a wealthy part of Dhaka, Bangladesh. Despite the location, there are many beggars living in the streets around me. Beggars are everywhere in Dhaka and yet the invisibility of their poverty is quite astonishing – this is everything from contempt for the poor to middle-class chatter about how they are all fakes. There is never that understanding, that awful and amazing truth, that had things gone differently, that beggar could have been been any of us. The source URL has a 25 pics slideshow of my invisible neighbours.
Source: banani.sixoranges.net
Banning beggars: a 2009 wish
Source: banani.sixoranges.net
5 years ago the government thought it could legislate away beggars simply by banning begging. In 9 months time Bangladesh is supposed to be beggar-free. One estimate puts the current number of beggars in Dhaka at 700,000. In an impoverished country like Bangladesh, there are concrete reasons why people engage in begging. They can’t simply be legislated away.
Source: banani.sixoranges.net
Deformities
Source: banani.sixoranges.net
Disabilities and any type of deformity or disfigurement is used to elicit pity or convey the raison d’etre for begging. The government has specifically legislated against the showing of deformities/wounds etc. These offend the middle classes in their 4x4s and so they are quick to part with their money ( or look the other way) in order to make these people vanish when approached at the traffic lights for example.
Homeless
Source: banani.sixoranges.net
At night, they sleep under plastic sheets which they erect on four sticks.
Mosque.
Source: banani.sixoranges.net
Many beggars in the area suffer from profoundly debilitating illnesses.