The Thinker

I saw something this week I rarely see in India, let alone the United States. Someone gave a beggar money.

Atanu Dey, who made a brief appearance in an earlier post, says it's standard practice. I have always been advised to refrain because most beggars in India reportedly give the brunt of handouts directly to a beggar lord. So I pressed Dey, a self-described thinker, on why he chooses to give.

"Would you beg?" he said, turning the questioning on me rather fiercely. Then softening, he said: "They beg because there is not an option. ... They were born in misery and live in misery."

Dey makes a living thinking about how best to develop rural -- and mostly poor -- India. He moved to Pune a few months ago, works as an economist and senior vice president for the Mumbai-based Netcore Solutions and runs a blog that muses on everything from India's need for standard street addresses to how difficult it is to pay bills in the country. For more of his eclectic bio, click here. To read his blog, click here. And to hear his thoughts on life and work in India versus the United States, click here.

The premise of his model for economic development is simple: India's rural areas need better infrastructure to lure services that will lead villagers to earn higher incomes. While in the Bay Area, he made a believer out of Vinod Khosla, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, and the two co-authored a white paper on the subject.

I could not help but relate Dey's solution to my own family, who, like most of India, claims rural roots. And like much of India, many members of my family have left for the cities, admittedly with mixed results.

I returned a few years ago to my father's ancestral village of Baranghati, Assam, to discover those who remained weeping over all they lacked.

"There is nothing here any more," a distant cousin named Manju said to me. "I have a master's degree but there is nothing for me to do." Clearly, a great disparity exists between the prosperous India I am focusing on this time around and the India from where my blood line flows.

The divide seems not just a matter of city versus country. Despite phenomenal growth and evidence of new wealth in Pune -- from malls to Mercedes Benzes -- its bumpy roads are still lined with slums and dotted with beggars, rapping on car windows and pressing their hands together in submission.

I look away, as I was taught to do as a child, back to texting, talking, reading, anything but acknowledging the humanity just inches away. The prevalence of air conditioning in cars with sealed windows has only increased the distance I can keep.

On my last day in Pune, I picked up a few boxes of the city's famed Shrewsbury biscuits (think Scottish shortbread but even more buttery). As I lifted one to my mouth, I heard the familiar rapping at the window. I rolled the window down and handed the biscuit to a young boy. He ate it right away.

Minutes later, I heard the sound again. It was a woman this time, swaddling a baby smaller than Naya. A biscuit didn't seem like enough, and would clearly do little for this fellow mother and her child.

I handed over the equivalent of 50 cents. It still didn't seem like enough, but the light turned green, I rolled up the window and we were on our way.

By S. Mitra Kalita |  October 21, 2005; 11:45 PM ET  | Category:  In Pune
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