Begging in Pakistan and the Cycle of Human Capital Decline

Street begging in Pakistan has become a recurring social problem, with charity and public sympathy potentially reinforcing a cycle that undermines human capital and social development. A Rs 32 billion a day industry Look around nearby, somewhere on the way to your school, college, university or office. Children with worn out clothes, faded eyes were compelled to demand some pennies from the people around them, followed by women with an infant and elderly men. They can easily be found in the streets on traffic signals or outside religious places. People help them by giving charity, old clothes, and food. What seems to be help and an act of kindness is actually the reinforcement of this practice. Turning out to be a vicious cycle of degradation of human capital. Pakistanis have learned to see this as a tragedy due to poverty and unemployment. However, this is a strategic industry based on sympathy, manipulation and deception. Begging culture in Pakistan has significantly increased in recent times. Pakistan has reportedly 38 million beggars, receiving Rs 32 billion daily, and creating a $ 42 billion economic drain yearly. With the average daily income of Rs 850, begging is not an outcome of poverty and helplessness, but instead an established industry that monetizes poverty, sympathy and humanity. The growing number of women and children on the streets is evidence of system and policy failure of regulatory authorities. The complete ecosystem begins with recruiters, who identify vulnerable families, handlers who transport women and children across the provinces, traffickers who train them to learn tactics that people will entertain. The most disturbing fact is traffickers physically harm children and make them disabled to increase their potency of earnings. They abuse and torture the ones who try to escape. Every year, many children reportedly influx into this system. Of around 1.5 million homeless children in Pakistan, one third are in Sindh province. They are forced to beg and steal by organized criminal groups. Sindh's own child protection research has shown that domestic trafficking of children for begging is more common than cross-border trafficking. According to the latest World Bank Report, more than 45 percent of Pakistanis live below the line of poverty with a daily income of $3.00/day. The proportion of extreme poverty has increased from 4.9 percent to 16.5 percent. Such vulnerabilities are opportunities for recruiters, targeting unstable income households for exploitation. Recruiters offer these downtrodden families a daily wage, debt in advance, or cash in hand in the exchange of a child. Recruiters also kidnap children and traffic them to other provinces for begging. The complete supply chain is organized and keenly supervised at every step. Women go in the begging sector due to divorce, abandonment, widowhood, or household's male unemployment. Begging culture prevails because it is an accessible income resource requiring no capital, and credential bringing up to zero entry barriers. Documented reports reveal that women with infants, borrowed or rented, increase beggars' earnings due to higher sympathy-driven income as compared to women alone. The same network structure is followed for the recruitment procedure. The beggar mafia is not only exploiting human capital but also involved in prevailing social evils. They serve as the entry point for organized criminal activities. The beggar mafia is repeatedly involved in police investigations in Karachi and other cities. Motorbike theft, spare parts theft from parked vehicles, kidnapping, drug trafficking, snatching and robbery. Beggars are also the means to courier narcotics and drugs, they are ideal to supply smaller quantities within the cities. To perform all these activities, beggars have the most protected cover, they are mobile and present all the time in public places. Most of the time they remain ignored and unnoticed by the crowd within. This provides a sufficient window to perform all of these activities. Most of these professional beggars do not have identification documents, which creates another layer of protection. To address this growing concern, different policies exist at the provincial level. Under the Vagrancy Act 1958, it is the responsibility of the district police to catch beggars. However, professional beggars are arrested and presented before the magistrate, but due to the magistrate's discretion either they are released immediately or granted bail. Sometimes they are sent to rehabilitation centres. Ineffective action against them leads to the police refraining from catching beggars, considering it a waste of time. As per the Punjab Destitute and Neglected Children Act, 2004 any person who keeps a child in unauthorized custody, treats him or her cruelly and employs him or her for begging, giving intoxicated substances or exposing to sexual abuse, prostitution or any immoral conditions is punishable with imprisonment extending to three years or fine of up to Rs 50,000 or both. According to Anti-Gadagari Act 2021, the arrested beggars are suggested to be kept in social welfare homes instead of jail. Most of the existing laws target individual beggars, but policies should target the collective networks to disrupt their supply chain and dismantle professional beggary. Law enforcement; should be made effective on practical grounds, policy reforms and implementation are needed to be uniform across all provinces to prevent relocation of operations from one provincial border to another just to make an escape route out of stronger laws. A database system should be established on district level, monitoring the number of beggars by age, gender and location. This step is necessary to frame policies and actions accordingly. As per the reported involvement of beggars in criminal activities, take strong actions against these criminal groups and send the vulnerable to the shelter homes and rehabilitation centres. Here they are trained and become skilled and independent: women can learn stitching, embroidery, preparing handicrafts, culinary arts, and cooking. With these skills, they can earn productively and also can contribute to the economy. The children must be sent to schools and engaged in studies to build a stable future ahead. Charity funds should be spent on building social welfare centres, to facilitate and train this large human resource. The silent crisis of beggary and their growing number is an alarming concern, a visible threat for the perpetual peace of our society. The roots of beggary are not confined to the streets, it is the national economy which is running parallel to the legitimate one, based on the extraction of a child's future, a women's dignity and country's human capital at one traffic signal at a time, and is a serious matter of concern.