One's Spirituality is another's Business and a beggar's misery

When pop morality defines your spirituality, then your access to god could become a sham for you at best and a tragedy for another.

People go to Ajmer, Pushkar and other pilgrimages, give alms to beggars and somehow believe they have gained the goodness of divinity and now all their sins are gone!

Begging in Ajmer is a Rs. 10 crores business.  In a 15 day Urs at the Khwaja Garib Nawaz Dargah, the total earning amount to USD 2.2 million… that’s a cool about $150k a day!!

The payments to the beggars depend on how bad the beggar’s body is.  A person without hands or legs is at the top of the pay-scale getting Rs 2000 a day.  It becomes almost half as someone has one set of limbs.  Old people get paid more and younger people get the least.  A shift could be 5 hrs to 10 hrs.

A few years back beggars used to beg on their own.  But then came 10 syndicates – or “business groups” – to formalize the entire operation and run it methodically.

Reference Links:

1. In Ajmer, begging’s Rs 10 cr biz

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