After many months in India I stumbled on my preferred method: * say nothing * give the [palms together Indian greeting][1] to the person asking (they will almost always respond in kind) [![Photo by Saptarshi Biswas. licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en][2]][2] * 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** and every time I tried the above method they always moved on. Works like magic. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Namaste [2]: https://i.sstatic.net/F3AzF.jpg