November is the cruelest month
Come November and thieves and beggars from neighbouring states start gathering at railway stations and bus depots to make their way towards Goa ~ the destitute man’s Gulf. This is in anticipation of the Goa Begging and Looting Festival, as it were, which begins around Diwali and ends on a high with the New Year. Beginning Diwali, the number of beggars, thieves and pickpockets in the capital city and other towns in Goa have already started going up.
Preying on the goodness and/or superstitions of Goans, mothers with crying, ill-fed children evoke the pity of local residents and tourists alike. The common haunts of beggars are outside city restaurants, places of worship, markets and shopping/touristic areas. Giving to the poor is of course one’s personal choice, but the law has specifically banned begging as apart from a debatable opportunity for philanthropy society maims beggars by making them perennially dependent on public largesse, rather than contributing positively to society through work. One understands that many beggars are actually members of marginalized communities who are unfortunate refugees created by mega-government projects. They beg because they have lived by food gathering and hunting or subsistence agriculture and lack the skills to fit into the labour force ~ all of which only highlights the paradox of many Indias.
To stem this influx, however, the governments, especially of neighbouring states from where the destitute originate, have to find lasting solutions for India’s poor. Often beggars are confined to filthy slums, legalized post-haste and used as vote banks even while they live in sub-human conditions ~ in nearly all states of India and increasingly in Goa too.
As was documented by this newspaper last year when the “begging season” started, Goa is now the theatre of professional beggars where thugs drop these beggars off various locations of the capital city in their vehicles, as done in Mumbai, and then collect the loot from them in the evening whilst confining them to inhuman conditions. Others are seen coming into Panjim by the dozens via the Betim ferry early morning and parking themselves before shrines on days of special worship. Beggars also do the rounds of various towns on market days.
But when it is festival time professional thieves also lay siege on the city in addition to the beggars, beginning with the International Film Festival of India. Their itinerary comprises IFFI, the feast of St Francis Xavier, the feast of Immaculate Conception at Panjim, Christmas and then New Year. Surging among the crowds are thieves and pickpockets out to make a killing. Already, a vehicle has been stripped of all four tyres in front of the Old GMC where it was parked. Numerous instances of petty theft during these festivals surface each year ~ thefts of helmets, snatching of handbags, and auto theft are the most reported. The thieves are such consummate professionals that when a scooterist went to click a photograph of the Old GMC heritage building at night during IFFI 2012, in exactly eight minutes his helmet was gone!
Thieves have a field day during the St Francis Xavier and Mary Immaculate Conception feasts looting unsuspecting fair goers, while Christmas and New Year Festivities are ideal occasions to break into houses as people are out on extended year-end revelries with family and friends. The home department and police have to draw up meticulous strategies and plans to stem this rot which not only exposes the sordid underbelly of petty crime and ruins festive revelry, but also gives a bad name to the State and its people.
