A complex for beggars but without a beggar
NEW DELHI : A 22-acre complex with tree-lined garden paths leading to five buildings and a tennis court in northwestern Delhi’s Narela resembles a college campus.
This is the Delhi government’s detention centre for beggars, called Sewa Sadan. It can accommodate more than 1,500 people and has six employees, including a superintendent with an impressive office, a caretaker, and a sweeper.
But there is not a single beggar. That is when the city is teeming with beggars and begging is illegal in the national capital.
“No beggar has come here for more than a year. This place is like a haunted jungle now,” said Sonwati, a sweeper at Sewa Sadan for 33 years.
The homes have long, highceiling corridors painted bluegrey and pale yellow. There are about 70 rooms in all. A peek into the rooms reveals dust and cobwebs.
Three homes have been shut for many years and one serves as a detention centre for restricted foreigners such as those staying illegally in India.
Sewa Sadan had 200 beggars in 2010 and the number never crossed the three-figure mark thereafter. The government had spent about ~20 crore on staff salaries, maintenance and operation of the facility since 20092010, according to its response to an RTI application in 2015.
Most of the Sewa Sadan employees were allocated work at different offices of the social welfare department.
Sonwati knows a lot about the vagaries of a beggar’s life. After all, she has spent a considerable part of her life, ‘advising’ them as their ‘friend and guide’.
“I have been like a mother to many beggars here; a lot of them are compelled to beg out of sheer poverty but there are others for whom begging is like a business,” says Sonwati, her eyes full of empathy.“But no beggar has come here for more than a year and I have nothing to do. This place is now like a haunted jungle.” Sonwati has been a sweeper for the past 33 years at Sewa Sadan, a sprawling complex with five homes for beggars in Lampur village on the city’s north-western fringes.
The complex is operated by the Delhi government’s social welfare department. People found guilty of begging–an offence by law–by the court are sent here for one to three years.
Sewa Sadan looks more like a salubrious college campus: it boasts of tree-lined paths strewn with leaves, vocational training rooms, an art room, a tennis court.
The five beggars’ homes within the complex with their long, high-ceiling corridors, painted in blue-grey and paleyellow, look like academic departments. The complex has 70 rooms with a capacity to house over 1,500 inmates, and also an impressive superintendent’s office.
But what this grand complex for beggars does not have is beggars – not even one even though the city teems with beggars.
On the wall, outside the superintendent’s office, is a board supposed to display ‘Residents strength of Sewa Sadan Complex at a Glance’. But the column that shows the day’s strength of each of the five houses is blank.