Featured Image Credit: Bharat Jain/Chanin Nont
Topics: News, World News
Kit Roberts
Begging is something you would imagine that someone would only turn to as a last resort.
The overwhelming weight of social pressure and a culture of shaming people for asking for help creates a deep-seated sense of pride. In turn, this leads to people who are forced into circumstances where they have to beg others on the street to be wrongly viewed as almost subhuman by others.
However, it seems that one man has not only turned his life around after begging, but seems to have found a way to game the system.
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Bharat Jain takes to the streets in Mumbai - India's financial capital - to beg from strangers. Typically, he can take home as around 2500 rupees - around $30 - per day or around 75,000 rupees ($913) a month.
It might not seem like much, but it seems that Bharat has managed to turn scrimping and saving into an art form.
According to The India Times, he possesses a two-bedroom flat in Mumbai and also lets out his two shops in Thane for a rent of 30,000 rupees per month - all bought from the proceeds of his begging.
Bharat himself was left uneducated due to the deprivation he had faced growing up. He has made sure that his children will not have to go through the same problems as they grow up.
They now go to a convent school, and are getting a formal education.
He typically spends 10 to 12 hours begging along the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus railway station and Azad Maidan sports ground.
All this has allowed him to buy a two bedroom flat which is worth about 12 million rupees, or just over $146,000.
While $30 a day might not seem much in the US, the lower cost of living and low property prices mean that his earnings have a lot more purchasing power in India.
In fact, $913 per month is higher than the average salary to live comfortably in Mumbai, which equates to around $730 per month. Not bad at all!
It's no surprise then that Bharat has been given the nickname of 'the world's richest beggar'.
His earnings have seen him gain a comfortable life for himself and his family, as well as a much better start for his children than he had.
You might think that given the level of success he has achieved and the security he has found, that Bharat might think about retiring from begging and living off his properties.
However, despite the advice of his family he has no such plans and still begs.