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In this archive story we are meeting a Poor Indian beggar in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India.
Read the background story of this archive photo by the photographer. |
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Poor people often are more prone to severe diseases due to the lack of health care and due to living in non-optimal conditions. Among the poor, girls tend to suffer even more due to gender discrimination. Economic stability is paramount in a poor household otherwise they go in an endless loop of negative income trying to treat diseases. In this photograph an Indian man is begging in his attempt to get money for his daily needs in Mumbai, India.
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Poor Indian beggar
With poverty it is often seen that a person in a poor household falls ill it is up to the family members to take care of their family members due to limited access to health care and lack of health insurance. The household members oftentimes have to give up their income or stop seeking further education to tend to the sick member. There is a greater opportunity cost imposed on the poor to tend to someone compared to someone with better financial stability.
What is a beggar begging for?
The definition of a beggar is a person who asks people for money or gifts to sustain himself or is a person who is extremely poor. An example of a beggar is someone who stands on the street corner with a sign asking for money. An example of a beggar is a homeless person or a person who begs or asks for charity. |
Confronting poverty in India
Poverty and begging in India can be very confronting for those not used to seeing it. Begging is the practice of imploring others to grant a favor, often a gift of money, with little or no expectation of reciprocation. A person doing such is called a 'Beggar' or 'Panhandler'. Beggars may operate in public places such as transport routes, urban parks and markets. Besides money, they may also ask for food, drinks, cigarettes or other small items. Begging may encompass requests for help meeting basic needs such as medical care and shelter, as well as requests for people to pay for vacations, school trips and other things that the beggar wants but cannot comfortably afford and beggars differ from religious mendicants in that some mendicants do not ask for money.
Their subsistence is reciprocated by providing society with various forms of religious service, moral education and preservation of culture as seen with in beggar photo of the Indian beggar.
A social phenomenon with begging
Begging is an age-old social phenomenon in India and in the medieval and earlier times begging was considered to be an acceptable occupation which was embraced within the traditional social structure. This system of begging and almsgiving to mendicants and the poor is still widely practiced in India, with over 400,000 beggars in 2015. In contemporary India, beggars are often stigmatized as undeserving and people often believe that beggars are not destitute and instead call them professional beggars.
There is a wide perception of begging scams and this view is refuted by research organizations, which claim that beggars and other homeless people are overwhelmingly destitute and vulnerable. Their studies indicate that 99 percent men and 97 percent women resort to beggary due to abject poverty, distress migration from Rural villages in India and the unavailability of employment.
"Poverty is the state of not having enough material possessions or income for a person's basic needs as seen in the beggar images, beggar photos and the Indian beggar images. Poverty may include social, economic and political elements"
Social norms in India
Social norms are believed to influence social structure through relations between the majority and the minority. As those who align with the majority are considered 'Normal' and those who align with the minority are considered 'Abnormal', majority-minority relations create a hierarchical stratification within social structures that favors the majority in all aspects of society and where the beggars in India and the Indian beggars are not favored. Class society or class-based society is an organizing principle society in which ownership of property, means of production and wealth is the determining factor of the distribution of power, in which those with more property and wealth are stratified higher in the society and those without access to the means of production and without wealth are stratified lower in the society.
In a class society, at least implicitly, people are divided into distinct social strata, commonly referred to as social classes or castes. Societies with large class differences have a greater proportion of people who suffer from mental health issues such as anxiety and depression symptoms. A series of scientific studies have demonstrated this relationship and are found in life expectancy and overall health as portrayed here in the beggar picture and beggar image by Kristian Bertel | Photography.
Different poverty measures
'Absolute poverty' measures compare income against the amount needed to meet basic personal needs, such as food, clothing and shelter. 'Relative poverty' measures when a person cannot meet a minimum level of living standards, compared to others in the same time and place. Therefore, the floor at which 'Relative poverty' is defined varies from one country to another or from one society to another.
See this video about being poor in India made by Nikita Thakur.
The photographer's own experience about phototographing the poor in India
"- Photography is a powerful medium of expression and can often capture images that illustrate the extremes of life, both positive and negative. One of the most extreme examples of this is poverty photography in India. While these photographs can be emotionally moving and powerful, they also pose an ethical and emotional challenge for the photographer who takes them. The poverty that exists in India is extreme. Millions of people live in slums, lacking basic necessities such as food, water and shelter. Yet amidst this deprivation, there is a beauty that can be found in the resilience of the people and the spirit of community and family. These are the realities that poverty photography in India seeks to capture", the Photographer says.
"- No matter the emotions any photographer is feeling, poverty photography in India is a heavy moral burden. Photographers must remain aware of the power of their images and the fact that those images can be used to influence the lives of those living in poverty. They must always strive to show the humanity of their subjects and to do so without exploiting them", the Photographer says again.
Read also: Circle of poverty in India
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India is a land full of stories. On every street, on every corner and in the many places in India, life is rushing by you as a photographer with millions of stories to be told. In the archive story above, you hopefully had a readable insight in the story that was behind the photo of an Indian man in Mumbai. On this website of Kristian Bertel | Photography you can find numerous travel pictures from the photographer. Stories and moments that tell the travel stories of how the photographer captured the specific scene that you see in the picture. The photographer's images have a story behind them, images that all are taken from around India throughout his photo journeys. The archive stories delve into Kristian's personal archive to reveal never-before-seen, including portraits and landscapes beautifully produced snapshots from various travel assignments. The archive is so-far organized into photo stories, this one included, each brought to life by narrative text and full-color photos. Together, these fascinating stories tell a story about the life in India. India, the motherland to many people around the world, a land of unforgetable travel moments. The archive takes viewers on a spectacular visual journey through some of the most stunning photographs to be found in the photographer's archive collection. The photographer culled the images to reflect the many variations on the universal theme of beauty and everyday life in India. By adding these back stories the photographer's work might immensely enhanced the understanding of the photographs.
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