Strangers on the streets

There has been a sudden increase in the number of beggars and vendors in the streets of Guwahati. Simultaneously, citizens are also facing the menace of a large flock of people claiming to belong to the third gender, and causing annoyance of the highest order, be it in traffic signals or bus stations. Yet another category of people that is becoming increasingly visible in the streets of Guwahati is the self-styled sanyasis, all clad in red or saffron. Most of these people, one can easily make out, do not belong to the state. While the vendors—who include women and men as well as little children who should have been ideally in school at their age—who have arrived in large numbers are seen camping on pavements and roadsides, there have been incidents of snatching of mobile phones, purses, and other valuables from inside cars waiting at traffic signals. The third gender people, on the other hand, literally fleece people in the name of begging, as if the government has authorized them to earn a living by extortion by annoying the citizens. Of late, there have been instances of these self-styled third gender “beggars” also entering city buses and disturbing commuters who pay for a bus ride to reach their workplace or other destination safely and on time. The number of self-styled sanyasis, most of whom claim to have magical powers, has also increased rapidly in recent times, and instead of heading for Kamakhya and other religious shrines, they have taken to disturbing people in the name of providing them so-called solutions for various personal problems by selling talismans and various unauthorized medicine at exorbitant prices. These beggars, who include the so-called third gender crowd, vendors and sanyasis must be also adding to various public health issues by defecating and urinating in public places. The fact remains that the Union Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment has launched a massive initiative to make the country free of beggars under the centrally sponsored scheme called Support for Marginalized Individuals for Livelihood and Enterprises (SMILE). But with a similar government department in Assam literally remaining nonexistent despite bifurcation of the erstwhile Social Welfare department a couple of years ago, the SMILE scheme has not been able to make any headway in the state. On the contrary, a large number of beggars of all kinds, including a number of visually impaired persons, have descended in Guwahati from nowhere, much to the inconvenience of the citizens.