Applied Languages

Beggars in India are preparing for next year’s Commonwealth Games – by learning new languages. While the city authorities are busy preparing for the Games, thousands of homeless in the Indian capital New Delhi are hoping for better business from foreign tourists if they learn their native tongue.

And although English is spoken in the majority of Commonwealth countries, New Delhi’s brainy beggars are teaching themselves other languages such as French and Spanish. Savitri, a street performer said: “There will be thousands of foreign tourists when the games are going on. That is why some beggar families are teaching young child beggars to beg in foreign languages.”

Savitri’s family of 25 people, including 15 children, belong to a tribe from the eastern state of Chhattisgarh. Together they perform acrobatics and tight-rope tricks to earn money on New Delhi’s streets. Her daughter Kusum, 10, is also an acrobat. “We say: ’Please sir. Give me 10 rupees. Anything…’,” she said.

Vijay Babli, who claimed to be the leader of more than 1,200 families inhabiting a place called Lal Quarter in the city, said “classes” preparing young children to target the tourists expected during the Games have already begun. Many child beggars who have never been to school can now speak English, French and Spanish due to the classes they hold, Mr Babli told the Indian paper the New Indian Express.

Raju Sansi, who claims to be a “tutor” at the night school in Lal Quarter, said: “Students are taught how to say phrases like ’I am an orphan’, ’I have not eaten for days’, ’I am ill and have no money for medicine, please help me in the name of God’.” One of them, at the Jantar Mantar astronomical observatory in New Delhi, said the trend to ask foreign tourists for money in their own language added a “personal touch” to begging.

From a few thousand in the capital during the early 1990s, Delhi University’s School of Social Studies estimates the beggar population will touch 100,000 next year.

Read more: The Sun