ANJUNA: Tourist season is yet to take off full scale and the
Anjuna beach is already flooded with hawkers and beggars even as personnel of the
Indian Reserve Battalion man the beach.
A few years ago, the tourism department banned hawkers on beaches, and
IRB were posted for the safety of tourists including ensuring that holidayers were not hassled by either vendors, touts or beggars.
Besides large numbers of beggars and hawkers, which include masseurs, tattoo artists, photographers, women selling trinkets, etc, this reporter also saw a tribal family with two children in tow looking to impress foreign tourists with the acrobatic skills of the youngest child, a girl as young as seven or eight, who was walking on a tightrope.
And deployment of IRB did not seem to be succeeding at keeping the nuisance at bay.
A watersports operator at Anjuna beach said the hawkers come to the beach mostly when the IRB personnel break for lunch or when they retire for the day. "It is not easy to keep a tab on them given that the beach has many entry points," he said, and added that hawkers watch the movement of the IRB men from the periphery of the beach, and accordingly make their entry.
Another trader pointed out that hawkers take advantage of the fact that IRB personnel are not always on the move. "Most sit in one place and hardly patrol," said a hotel owner and added that hawkers are a regular feature on the beach during season time, and are mostly seen in the afternoons and evenings.
"We tried to shoo the beggars and hawkers away, but they keep returning," he said. Majority of the hawkers come from neighbouring states when the tourist season starts in October, he added.
Given the situation, the odds that tourists visiting Anjuna beach will enjoy a moment of solitude is small. A trip here will most certainly entail being badgered either by beggars or hawkers.