Introducing Koshish

Homelessness: Major Challenge facing us today; Koshish is a field action project of Tata Institute of Social Sciences,Mumbai. TISS has been involved in work with homeless population through its field work placements but more direct work was needed.

There was combination of reasons that led to the start of this project. Once, it was decided that we would get into direct work with homeless citizens, we started shaping it. Initially, regular visits were made during the night time to identify the geographical location for the project.Since,we were yet to test our work in the real field, we decided to start with M Ward and Kurla,due to the physical proximity to TISS.
At the government level, work had already been initiated inside the beggars’ home through the field work, a year ago. I was the first student to be placed there after almost 18 years and i still how i faced complete denial in the beginning but when the results started showing, it all began to change. Untiring efforts have started yielding results by now. Department was opening in terms of support and cooperation. Resistance from the staff at Beggar’s Home also became almost negligible. Infact, fairly good level of acceptance evolved.
Although, service delivery was not the agenda but it was essential requirement to create that entry passage. It was needed to network with various individuals and organizations and bring services in, especially inside Beggars Home. That’s the prerequisite to give them trust that things will happen and what we say, would materialize to some extent.

Beggars Homes are the custodial institutions maintained under Bombay Prevention of Beggary Act, 1959.Law was brought in place to check the issue of beggary. It basically aimed at prevention of beggary through training and rehabilitation of those who were involved into begging.

However, the way beggary and beggar is defined in the act changes the whole document into very vulnerable and anti-poor document. Of late, the focus of the police has been completely on the arrest of ‘so called’ beggars though the systems that were put in place for training and rehabilitation have either disappeared or become non-functional.Therefore, effectively what remains today is not a law aiming for rehabilitation of socially poor category but a mean to punish any poor person for being poor. The poor farmers and laborers who are forced to migrate from their native lands for various reasons are the biggest victims of this law.
The nature of BPBA, 1959 and its implementation which criminalizes poverty was very crucial among the reasons why this work was initiated.

Koshish aims at addressing the interrelated issues of beggary, destitution and homelessness through a combination of measures pitched at the varying levels of providing support for basic and immediate needs, facilitating linkages to gainful and secure employment, advocacy for integration into the larger society and for the development of meaningful policy, and activism for securing rightful entitlements.