Social Inequality on Pitara Kids Network

The Beggar who is a Money Lender

Fri, 26 Oct 2001 13:55:29 +0000

August 5: A beggar is someone who is so poor that she has to beg people for money. For, she generally has little that belongs to her. No money to buy food, no proper shelter to live in, not even perhaps, two sets of clothes to wear.

Or, at least that’s what we’re told to believe.

But Bhanwari Sethani forces us to take a new look at the tired, old pictures of the beggar that we have in our mind. Bhanwari Sethani is a beggar all right. But at the same time, she is also a money lender. And she has made all her riches in the begging profession. So much so that the popular Hindi word for rich woman, ‘Sethani’ has been added to her name.

Children of a lesser god

Fri, 09 Jan 2004 18:53:05 +0000

This is the story of a small boy of my age working next door. His name is Bharat.

His parents could not afford his studies and food. So they sent him to someone’s house to work as a servant. He was interested in studies. But there was no use. He had to work hard day and night.
In the morning, when I go to school with a heavy bag on my back full of books, young Bharat also comes to the bus stop, to drop his master’s son.

Duped Again

Wed, 01 May 2002 10:40:56 +0000

October 21: There are two Indias – the India of the powerful, privileged classes and the India of the masses. The powerful have good jobs and enviable lifestyles while the masses are precariously perched on the brink of survival. A large proportion of the masses lives in villages, which, as Mahatma Gandhi said long ago, is where the real India lives. Ill-fed, ill-clothed and ill-educated.

Time and again, this real India finds itself being taken for a ride. Last week we wrote about the villagers in Maharashtra who were promised jobs by the state government 25 years ago, and are still waiting.