After many months in India I stumbled on my preferred method: * say nothing * give the palms together Indian greeting to the person asking as in the image below (they will almost always respond in kind) * continue with what I was doing I do like that this is a bit more respectful to the other person. However, the main advantage is that when I just ignored the person begging they would often continue following me and asking. Every time I tried the above method they always moved on. Works like magic. 