On Friday 26 Sep 2008 10:52:40 pm Cory Doctorow wrote: > Anyone got a favourite secular kids' poverty charity in Mumbai? I feel > like my randomly arrived-at donations to beggar kids (plus the weird > baby-food scam in Colaba) have been an infinitesimal drop in the ocean > and I'd like to contribute to substantial and lasting change.
I'm not actually answering your question, but I am going to be a cynical Indian. If you haven't already read "Maximum City" by Suketu Mehta I would recommend that book on an longish flight. (And thanks to Udhay for actually lending that book to me) Let me make a disclaimer first - in fact two: 1) I am not denying the abject and unfathomable poverty in India 2) I am not defending it either I am merely trying to point out the stupendous hypocrisy and callousness in India that would probably be considered "normal" in the social behavior of some animals - notably insects. Let me get down to what I wanted to say: If poverty stricken children attract charity, the best method of getting money out of charity is to make your children appear as poverty stricken and miserable as you possible can. The best way to "make them appear that way" is to ensure that they really are that way - like a used dsposable diaper. This reminds me of a discussion we had on my alumni board (run by a silklister incidentally) in which a friend of mine wrote an article about a beautiful blonde beggar girl who came in for cancer treatment in the USA Quote: "It turned out that the family was akin to the lifestyles of New Age Travelers and Gypsies combined together. Both parents had a similar mindset in life and wandered most of the country begging as they went. Sure they had held temporary laboring jobs every now and then but for the main part, they begged. Their children pursued their profession although the pre teen ones had started to rebel a bit about the begging part. The only question that the father asked about his daughter’s medulloblastoma treatment was whether she would lose her lovely blonde tresses from the radiation treatment. If she did she was better off dead he declared for it was her long tresses and innocent looks that made her the highest earner amongst the family. Most of the staff at the Proton Beam center were open mouth aghast at such a mercenary statement from the father and after the expected assault by social workers and other do gooders and general messer uppers of life, decided that they would have nothing to do with the father at all." I will just cross post my response to that article - because it sums up my view: Quote: "In India a shaved, scarred head and preferably a paralysed child would add value as a beggar - so this is in marked contrast to what the father of this child said. In India the child is used as a prop in a different way. The parent needs help because his/her dharma is to look after a child and the more unfortunate the child is - the more help the parent needs. It seems that the father of the child wanted a completely intact beautiful child. Presumably the intact beauty was important in evoking sympathy in the US and a cripple would make all the community social services of the US kick in and perhaps put the father at risk of being accused and punished - or at least deprived of his child as a father unable to care for her. In India an intact beautiful girl beggar has mainly one role ahead - the flesh trade." shiv
