Written by Hritam Saha
Tiffin-snatching and tiffin-sharing are events of uniformity in everyone’s life. The former has started disappearing in our journey from immaturity to maturity thereby making the latter more practicable. Any friend who has not brought his/her tiffin thereby asked us to share our tiffin with the same, or we voluntarily, have shared our tiffin with the same, neither side thereof considered such a relationship as the one that prevails between an almsgiver and beggar. Why have we not felt that said relationship? Because the person with whom the tiffin got shared has not been in the occupation of seeking food and the person whose food has been shared has not been a giver but a sharer.

What is Begging?

Section 2(b) [i-iii] of The Children Act, 1960 and Section 2(1) [i] {a-e} of The Bombay Prevention of Begging Act, 1959 defines ‘begging’. The operative words in those sub-clauses which constitute ‘begging’ and separate it from charity of the colossal personalities to the poor are ‘soliciting’, ‘receiving’, ‘extorting’ and ‘obtaining’. All these words except ‘receiving’ mean a force that is applied by the beggar to get something. The applied force herein is the tree whose seed is the non-existence of livelihood. However, one of the sub-clauses of both the said sections has identified that force as pretence and I quote the said sub-clause:
[The Children Act, 1960
2(b) "begging" means-

(i) soliciting or receiving alms in a public place or entering on any private premises to solicit or receive alms, whether under the pretence of singing, dancing, fortune-telling performing tricks or selling articles or otherwise;]

I argue that even the highly paid employees of an organization pretend that their work life and family life are duly balanced and therefore if a dilapidated person claims to be a singer and sings then what's the harm in it? As still giving money/food to the beggar would depend upon the discretion of the listener. Singing or performing on the public street is the fundamental right of every citizen of India guaranteed by Article 19(1)[a, d,] (2007) 137 DLT 173 Ram Lakhan v. State and that itself operationalizes Article 21 of the Constitution of India. The American case laws that declare laws prohibiting performance on public streets unconstitutional are John v. Lindsay, Goldstein v. Town of Nantucket, Davenport v. City of Alexandria, Virginia, etc. The American courts have held that the public streets on which other forms of free speech namely political and religious rallies are allowed then street performance on those public streets shall also be allowed. However, the government can impose reasonable restrictions on such performance to secure the convenience of the public. Don't the politicians obtain votes by their rhetorical speeches devoid of logic? Isn't that begging?

Note: The provision to section 4 of the Bombay Prevention of Begging Act, 1959 exempts a person, from the application of the said act, entering an owner’s house for begging if the said owner does not complain about the same to the concerned.

Did the Honorable Delhi High Court do justice by holding both a Correctional Home and Imprisonment awarded as punishment same?

In the case of HARSH MANDER & ANR. Vs. UOI & ORS., the Honorable Delhi Court, except Section 11, declared Section 4- 29, of the Bombay Prevention of Begging Act, 1959 (hereinafter ‘said act’) unconstitutional. I quote Section 5(5) of the said act as under:

[5(5) The court shall order the person found to be a beggar under the last preceding sub-section to be detained in a Certified Institution for a period of not less than one year, but not more than three years...]

The definition of ‘Certified Institution’ is defined by Section 2(ii) of the said Act:

[2(ii) "Certified Institution" means any institution which the [Chief Commissioner] provides and maintains for the detention, training and employment of beggars and their dependents and includes an institution certified to be such under sub-Section (1) of section 13;]

Hence a beggar, under Section 5(5) read with Section 2(ii) of the said act, is detained in the said institution for their development. However, the Delhi High Court, amongst other sections, declared Section 5(5) unconstitutional thereby depriving the detained beggars of the opportunity of developing themselves. The reasoning of the court as to the said deprivation of the beggars is that the said ‘certified institutions’ are having a discording environment for humans to live in. If that was the reason then the court could have directed the State to improve the said environment just like the Supreme Court directed the Centre to construct female toilets in the naval warships for appointing women in warships as previously the same was been disallowed to get commissioned in warships because most of the warships are not having a separate bathroom, cabins and other facilities for women. Section 9 of the said Act says any person dependent on the beggar so detained can also join the latter if the court deems fit to make that happen. The court has not declared and rightly so Section 11 of the said act as unconstitutional that imprisons a person who forces beggary.

The preamble of the said act quotes:

‘Where it is expedient to make uniform and better provision for the prevention of begging in the State of Bombay; for the detention, training and employment of beggars and their dependents in certain institutions; for the custody, trial and punishment of beggar offenders...’

The preamble of the said act itself distinguishes a beggar and its dependents from a beggar offender, the formers are rehabilitated and the latter is punished. However, the court was grossly mistaken in holding the rehabilitation as punishment. Therefore, the court by the stroke of its judicial indelibility has released the Government of Delhi from its statutory imposed obligation of if of not giving life then at least endeavouring to give life to the beggars and their dependents thereby rendering the beggar to remain as they are and where they are.

Note: Tabriz, the capital city of East Azerbaijan Province of northwestern Iran does not have any beggars and homeless people in this world of beggary and homeless trodden.

Illiteracy in Literacy

An illiterate is a person who doesn't know how to read and write and therefore a person who has never been to school is considered illiterate. However, there is indeed illiteracy in literacy and it is more dangerous than having illiteracy in illiteracy. How? Do the schools and colleges teach us how to make money from the knowledge that they are inculcating to us? A big 'NO' (bearing the mass of Jupiter). Hence, a person having degrees though technically becomes a degreed person but automatically remains an illiterate with zero utility thereby enjoys the most regretted right of remaining degreed unemployed and the gravest refrainment here is that such degreed person cannot even beg to maintain himself or herself, thereby failing to exercise his right under 19(1) [a] rendering Article 21 of the Constitution of India, a body without its soul. It is a shivering irony that the education that inculcates us with self-esteem or sometimes ego or confuses us between the definition of self-esteem and ego, it is such education germinated self-esteem/ego that indeed debars us from doing an act that tarnishes the same.

Whose duty is to regulate or eradicate beggary— Centre or State?

Entry 6 and 9 of List II- State list to the seventh schedule of the Constitution makes beggary the subject of the State and Articles 38(1), 39(a), 41, and 46 of the Constitution of India cast a duty upon the State to address the same. An apparent reading of the words used in the said provisions would neither make beggary the subject of State nor would cast a duty upon the State to address the same because the jurisprudence of constitutional law teaches us that the essence of law lies in its spirit enshrined by the letter but not in the letter itself. Jugal Kishor vs. Cotton Co. Ltd.

I see what I see, I say what I say and I do what I do but all of such that I do, I do from the bottom of the spiral however when my elected or unelected government sees and does, it sees and does from the top of the spiral thereby making me the lamb and it the lion.

Anti-Begging laws in India

When there is a deadlock at the headlock of corona and politics....

[Continued].... the people of India have to resort to voting at the expense of their life; political ideologies incarnate into political idiosyncrasies incarcerating the idea of the 'Union of States'; a relay race of shifting responsibility without a finishing point takes place between the government of a State and the government of India and the arrival of many other alike beings take place.All when summed up makes the life and limbs of the common people susceptible to the ears and eyes of the COVID-19.History is a witness, which when called upon, has reiteratedly enunciated that war and crisis makes a government unipersonal. Such power then suffuses over every branch, for instance, Reporters Across Borders purported that 38 countries have hijacked freedom of the press.Many governments have enacted emergency laws to address the pandemic, like new powers of detention, closing non-essential businesses, limiting public gatherings and movement, monitoring the streets to ensure they remain inside.Some countries have also invoked emergency like Armenia, Estonia, Georgia, Latvia, Moldova and Romania. These actions though made in good faith have inseparable repercussions, for instance in Philipines, people are violently detained, belaboured and even killed for being cold with the restrictive orders, and when the actions of the authorities were questioned they justified themselves by colouring their cause of actions with unintelligible crayons. Miniscule of Confrontations has also been witnessed between the armed forces and people in the United States, Greece and Germany.It is a watertight proposition that lockdown has sent the human rights in hibernation though such has been done with good intentions. Still, severing the accountability from the largest picture of lockdown was a cancerous dream that indeed took the form of reality.In India, the largest picture was the inexplicable ever walking hunger march of the migrant workers which perhaps would remain a never-ending march for their families. The government of a state has invested their burden to another state stating the workers are not domiciled in their state. But that is why they are called migrant workers, not just workers. In such circumstances, the centre had graced the situation with absolute silence even though they have conveyed ration to the states but had not pressed anything for the migrants. At that time the Supreme Court, in its wisdom, deemed fit to take a resolution of disappearing with the sunset and not to rise with the sun.Are not these instances exemplifying the uninterrupted dictation of the governments?During the election this year, a newspaper in its print considered voting as the 'dance of democracy'. But I think it was a curtain-raiser. The subsequent substantive of the story was the 'uninvited dance of life shedding'.Politics in simpler and unharmful terms are disagreements that are conciliated and reconciled by deliberations.But here exists palatable incommunicado between the people in power due to their political constipation. But their speeches at biggish stages were that incandescent that it called upon horde of people to throng in their sabhas.Later, it was understood that people were there to assuage their stomach emptiness, not to imbibe the rhetorics of ever germinating politicians, because the number of people who were present there in a party's sabha did not commensurate with the number of votes that the party has received.The pandemic had a huge impact upon the economy, resulting in the imbalance of an already imbalanced socio-economic structure of the society which has been the blue and black to those people whose stomach's appetite solely compliments their daily actions.Comparing the GDP havoc endured by the countries, to approximate one country's efficacy over another against this pandemic is unwanted because every country has been unavoidably compelled by the virus to receive its invitation of downfall in every aspect, and the attendance of the people of some countries to such invitation has been either more or less but not null.Yes, it is indisputable that unemployment, societal disjunction, hunger, domestic violence, depression, etc., all together have increased. But can anybody assert that these were never there before this pandemic? I think the answer would be a big NO.'Health is wealth.' When we say this, things like unemployment and poverty are very much present, thus, we don't have a vibrant economy and the corollary is 'no wealth'. Hence, the other name of 'health is wealth' is, "as there is no wealth there is no health".Some say that a vibrant health system would not have been a guarantee against this pandemic. Yes, indeed, it could not have been a guarantee but it could have been a warranty, that is assurance rather than the commitment, that is guarantee. But here, the government knows that a vibrant health system could not be a shield of guarantee without even trying to make it happen. The drops of Astrology and drops of science are both in positives. Therefore they repel each other.The game of touchable and untouchable, black and white, etc. have been widely familiar for human beings across the world. Like in India, the 'so-called upper castes' purport that they would be contaminated if they come into contact with the 'untouchables' and somewhat similar reasons are for the differences between the whites and blacks. Hence, its a game of illusory contagiousness. But the game is a bit different in the case of COVID-19. If an 'upper caste' person comes into contact with an 'untouchable', he would not get contaminated because in the light of science, there is no trace of contamination. But yeah, those people could get mentally contaminated as they claim to be. In contrast to such, SARS-CoV-2 (the virus which spreads COVID-19) can spread to all humans. Yes, you've again read it correctly, HUMANS. It does not discriminates between touchables and untouchables or whites and blacks, and one more point, this contamination can take the lives of the people, whereas in the previous case, the mentally contaminated ones take the lives of those who had 'contaminated' them as a compensation for their illusory damages.And what politics does in such cases, it encashes such disaster to transform it into a never-ending one for the sake of meeting their political ends, where end means an extension of infinite hedonism with sheer impunity.But this time, politics has averted from the game which was unfolding against the healthcare personnels. Why? Because such a game would have inflicted everyone including politics. Therefore, politics obituaries for its administrators and not for those who have chosen politics to govern them.Let's talk about the elections. Were there no ways available to cherish democracy other than to conduct the elections in this pandemic? If no, then were there no ways left for the politics to witness people's throng without creating the opportunity for the people to reach out to politics physically? Was it needed to apprise people about their past and would be, via rallies?Many in the history of India had shed blood to earn freedom, we, the people of India have tenaciously deliberated to gift ourselves a written Constitution and democracy is a vital cog of it. As said that voting is a 'dance of democracy' and to actualize democracy, elections are conducted. "Had the framers of our constitution ever conceived the thought of witnessing such dance at the expense of people's life?"We are so determined to see the dance of democracy that we have forgotten to evoke the gorgeous dance of the celebrities. At least such would have impeded us to witness the buffoon dance of the politicians and perhaps could have protected lives, but yes, the latter can be witnessed free of cost and also with a toast of food. And why not? It is performed every five years.The multi-polarization of political beliefs at the expense of uniform goal in national interest and discrimination of religious beliefs have now been adjoined by the discrimination of the technological accessibility of people as there has been seen a sharp division among classes regarding the technological means.Has this pandemic compartmentalized human beings in every aspect? The answer seems to be still under construction.The deadlock at the headlock of corona and politics may completely end one day but for the time being, the relaxation of the deadlock is in progress at the effacement of the population.But the question that will remain to be discussed is, "What would happen after the clearance of the deadlock at the headlock of COVID-19 and politics". As of now, COVID-19 is in a headlock with politics and vice versa. But after the expungement of the pandemic, will the headlock by politics to the livelihood of people, would remain? Headlock by rich to the poor, employment to unemployment, vibrant medical structure to precarious medical structure, etc? The future would author and the past would readout.The gravitation of the earth pulls people down for the sake of stability. But the human structured rockets supersede this pull to expel itself from the earth to the space. We human beings are not rockets. Therefore no one is more and no one is less in respect of being stable. Therefore one may discriminate against an individual in every aspect and respect other than the means of stability. Because stability is the law of nature but not of humans.Views are personalWritten by Hritam Saha(Edited by Siddhant Sharma)

What is Begging?

Did the Honorable Delhi High Court do justice by holding both a Correctional Home and Imprisonment awarded as punishment same?

Illiteracy in Literacy

Whose duty is to regulate or eradicate beggary— Centre or State?

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