NEW DELHI — When an important guest is on his way over, it is common practice to sweep up one’s odds and ends and hide them all in the back room. So it was in New Delhi this week.
With days to go before President Obama’s arrival on Sunday, the order went out to “sanitize.” Municipal cow catchers were ordered to round up the stray cattle that amble down the city’s thoroughfares, unperturbed by the backup of traffic behind them. Men with slingshots have fanned out in the neighborhood around the Indian president’s sandstone palace, shrieking and barking in an effort to frighten away hundreds of rosy-bottomed monkeys.
City workers have been making the rounds on downtown streets, trying to persuade beggars to spend three days in a shelter, but they have had varied success. (“You see, beyond a point, I cannot do a military operation,” said Jalaj Shrivastava, the chairman of the New Delhi Municipal Council.) The sweets sellers are disappearing, and the sidewalk cobblers, and the sellers of feather-dusters and bead necklaces and black-market novels.
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Mr. Shrivastava, the municipal council chairman, said he had hoped to remove all the panhandlers to nearby night shelters for the duration of Mr. Obama’s visit but had met with resistance from nongovernmental advocacy groups that “are resisting them being taken by force.”
Late Friday, Mr. Pahuja, the bookseller, looked out from the shop where he has sat for 30 years. He was a little wistful, noting that the beggars would surely be back next week. “We want to show that our government is doing lots for them, but these people can’t work,” he said. “The Indian government doesn’t have enough money to give them. What do they do? They beg.”
Hari Kumar contributed reporting from New Delhi.
