Asian Diary: Revolt of the Beggars, Jerry Barrett

PART SIX: JAN. 6 and 7. Prior to the festival of lights at Mahabodhi, during the waning light of late afternoon, the tsog feast had been offered. Many Tibetan Buddhist religious events end with a tsog feast, where everyone is given a little plastic bag which eventually is filled with small boxes of juice, candy, oranges, apples, cookies, crackers, cheese puffs, and other snack food. When we arrived on the grounds earlier, a large space on level two had been taken up with high mounds of boxes, truckloads of packaged food and drink of the type found in convenience stores throughout the globe. By the time of our festival of lights crowd experience, all of the food and drink had been distributed. Since this was the last day of the celebration, the normally aggressive beggars became even more aggressive. As we walked down the walled path to the rear entrance, a woman holding her child as though it were a rag doll refused to leave us alone, leaning against Christine and holding onto her arm, rapidly speaking in her dialect in a high-pitched voice. Not taking "no" for an answer, it took a nearby guard to remove her grasp and allow us to go on our way.

While we sometimes give alms to the infirm and the elderly, our experience is that Bodh Gaya tourists, religious and otherwise, were generally reluctant to give beggars anything, knowing about the various scams and having seen trusting tourists provide alms, only to attract crowds of beggars pushing and shoving around the giver and following her down the street, berating her for not giving them alms, also. We had tested this generalization, that some may find cynical, by giving a bright, 12 year old local boy who spoke good English enough money to buy a dictionary, which he said he would place in the library at his school. (In Nepal such school kids simply ask for your pen.) We said we'd go with him to see him give his school the book, and we bought the book for him at a nearby store of his choice. Then he and his student friends took us away from the main street, deeper down rutted roads, until we just gave up, fearing the worst. The next day when we saw them again and refused to give the boy more money, he told us that he sold the dictionary back to the bookstore, since he knew he couldn't count on us for more money, and it was our fault that his school library didn't have a dictionary.

As we walked through the archway to the Mahabodhi grounds on the way back to our hotel after our festival of lights crowd experience, a growing group of beggars began to gather around us, eyeing Christine's plastic tsog bag. We struggled through the crowd over to a nearby rickshaw and, as the beggars began to push and shove to get closer, blocking our exit, Christine threw the bag over her head as far as she could. The crowd fell over each other chasing the bag, and we went on our way. Later that evening, a mild-mannered woman described her similar experience. She said she was alone and the beggars were closing in on her, tearing small holes in her plastic bag and trying to pull things out. Mild mannered, she apologetically told us she swung the bag around her like a weapon in order to give herself some space. A man passing by jumped in and, together, they were able to fend off the mob. The woman threw the bag in the air as far away as she could, and the beggars, men, women, and children, trampled over each other in pursuit. Of course, children begging on the streets is not just a Bodh Gaya problem. An official sign at the Kathmandu airport suggests that begging children not be given anything.

By 9 am the next day we had checked out of the hotel and were on our way in a taxi to the airport, about 10K out of town between Bodh Gaya and Gaya, with our Druk airline tickets and passports in hand. (Druk Airlines, owned by the government of Bhutan, provides the only way to get into the country by air, and offers flights from many major cities in Asia. One has to be specially trained to fly into mountainous Bhutan, due to dangerous flying conditions and the desire to prevent unregulated tourism. Situated between India and China, the approach to Paro, the only viable commercial passenger airport in this country of 700,000, forces today's commercial jets to fly sidewise between the towering cliffs of a mountain pass. Wikipedia tells us that "Due to its largely unspoilt natural environment and cultural heritage, Bhutan has aptly been referred to as the The Last Shangri-la. While the Bhutanese are free to travel abroad, Bhutan is seen to be inaccessible to many foreigners....However it is the high tourist tariff [one must hire a full-time government guide] and requirement to go on packaged tours that makes Bhutan an exclusive tourist destination."

Relative to its neighbors, Bhutan has a high standard of living, primarily because unlike Nepal, which the Bhutanese don't care to emulate, economically or culturally, the government has created hydroelectric power and sells it to India. The King of this small, self-isolated, Buddhist country, Jigme Khesar Namgyal Wangchuck, wants to use his growing economy to uphold traditional cultural and spiritual values, calling the result "Gross National Happiness," which he considers more important than GNP. A 2005 survey reported that only 3% of Bhutanese reported being unhappy, while the number was 13% in the U.S. "The Happy Planet Index estimates that the average level of life satisfaction in Bhutan is within the top 10% of nations worldwide.")

We shortly arrived at the large, recently-built Gaya airport, a three-story, white stucco affair, sitting in the middle of vast, flat farmlands, with landing strips that go on forever: a snap for Druk Airline pilots. The large parking lot was fairly empty, suggesting that its primary purpose was to service Bodh Gaya tourists, not locals. The airport had an underused feel to it, with little activity on the roadways and entrances. Four commercial passenger jet flights were scheduled to leave during the next few hours, so we anticipated flight crowds would eventually form. We anticipated being in one such group. (Next: Gross Local Unhappiness.)

Monday, March 10

Another Bush Liar: Phony Obama Proving To Be Just Another Politician, Krugman and Brooks

public optimism about Iraq is rising: 53 percent of the public believes that the United States will definitely or probably succeed in achieving its goals. So anger about the war isn’t likely to be decisive in the election. The state of the economy, on the other hand, could well give Democrats a huge advantage — especially, to be blunt about it, with white working-class voters who supported President Bush in 2004....

According to exit polls, Mr. Obama narrowly edged out Mrs. Clinton among Ohio voters who consider Iraq the most important issue — but these voters cast only 19 percent of the ballots in the Democratic primary. Meanwhile, Mrs. Clinton led by 12 points among the much larger group of voters citing the economy as the most important issue — and by 16 points among those who cited health care. Mrs. Clinton’s winning margin was twice as large among those who were worried about their own financial situation as among those who weren’t.

Why has Mr. Obama stumbled when it comes to economic issues? Well, on health care — which is closely tied to overall concerns about financial security — there is a clear, substantive difference between the candidates, with the Clinton plan being significantly stronger. More broadly, I suspect that the Obama mystique — his carefully created image as a transformational, even transcendent figure — has created a backlash among those unconvinced that he’s interested in the nuts-and-bolts work of fixing things. Ohio voters were more likely to say that Mr. Obama inspires them — but more likely to say that Mrs. Clinton has a clear plan for the country’s problems.

And Mr. Obama’s attempt to win over workers by portraying himself as a fierce critic of Nafta looked, and was, deeply insincere — an appearance particularly costly for a candidate who tries to seem above politics as usual. --Paul Krugman

Barack Obama had a theory. It was that the voters are tired of the partisan paralysis of the past 20 years. The theory was that if Obama could inspire a grass-roots movement with a new kind of leadership, he could ride it to the White House and end gridlock in Washington. Obama has built his entire campaign on this theory....This message has made him the front-runner. It has brought millions of new voters into politics. It has given him grounds to fend off attacks. In debate after debate, he has accused Hillary Clinton and others of practicing the old kind of politics....

There are a few ways to interpret the losses in Texas and Ohio. One is demographic. He didn’t carry the groups he often has trouble with — white women, Latinos, the less educated. The other is tactical. Clinton attacked him, and the attacks worked. The consultants, needless to say, gravitate toward the tactical interpretation. And once again the cry has gone up for Obama to get tough. This advice gets wrapped in metaphors. Obama has to start “throwing punches” or “taking the gloves off.” Beneath the euphemisms, what the advice really means is that Obama has to start accusing Clinton of things.

This time, Obama, whose competitive juices are flowing, has apparently accepted the advice. The Obama campaign is now making a big issue of Hillary Clinton’s tax returns and dropping hints about donations to President Clinton’s library and her secret White House papers. It’s willing to launch an ethics assault. “If Senator Clinton wants to take the debate to various places, we’ll join that debate,” the Obama strategist David Axelrod told reporters the other day. These attacks are supposed to show that Obama can’t be pushed around. But, of course, what it really suggests is that Obama’s big theory is bankrupt. You can’t really win with the new style of politics. Sooner or later, you have to play by the conventional rules....

As the trench warfare stretches on through the spring, the excitement of Obama-mania will seem like a distant, childish mirage. People will wonder if Obama ever believed any of that stuff himself. And even if he goes on to win the nomination, he won’t represent anything new. He’ll just be a one-term senator running for president. In short, a candidate should never betray the core theory of his campaign, or head down a road that leads to that betrayal. Barack Obama doesn’t have an impressive record of experience or a unique policy profile. New politics is all he’s got. He loses that, and he loses everything. Every day that he looks conventional is a bad day for him. Besides, the real softness of the campaign is not that Obama is a wimp. It’s that he has never explained how this new politics would actually produce bread-and-butter benefits to people in places like Youngstown and Altoona. If he can’t explain that, he’s going to lose at some point anyway. --David Brooks