Pakistan’s child beggars and society’s criminal oblivion
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It is a common sight that strikes one in the face at red lights in all major Pakistani cities: A swarm of children as young as four or five offering to wipe windshields for money. Sometimes they’re selling a bunch of pencils, or face masks or simply begging. Old and young men and women carry babies around no matter the weather, often drugged to sleep.
Begging is unlawful, but like many things illegal in weak states and permissive societies, it is ubiquitous. From early morning to late evening, and even around midnight, children roam among a diverse group of beggars in the cities in large numbers. They include both girls and boys, focused on their work as they approach new cars in rows, and in case of refusal, move quickly on to the next one, careless about the sudden movement of vehicles. It is left to the drivers to mind through the haphazard crisscrossing of these many children unpredictably swinging around. It is not just a traffic issue, it is a moral, social and political issue to which Pakistani state and society remains indifferent, oblivious, and even tolerant. Child-begging – with its organized mafia and even parent profiting – is unfathomable in law-bound civil societies, where these children would be in schools, reading, learning and preparing to be free and productive citizens.
Beggary by children is an organized business, well managed and protected by the beggar mafia, which is often invisible and operates from behind the shadows.
Rasul Bakhsh Rais
There are vested interests connected with the expansion and perpetuation of child begging. First, there are the families, particularly of the Afghans displaced by wars and gypsy communities that for generations have travelled from place to place, adopting begging as a profession. If you stand by and observe, you will see whole families occupying different spots at the same crossing, and an old man or a lady issuing directions. In addition to this, there are newer landless castes and families from Punjab and Sindh that have become professional beggars, some of them even going to Iran and the Middle East. Some of them have earned so much that they are now moneylenders in the informal financial market, but even with so much money, they keep their extended families in this profession. Such families have tendencies to have more babies in order to have more hands to beg. Among them are also seasonal beggars from lower castes and poor families struggling to survive on the margins. Summers in the hilly resorts and the holy month of Ramadan are when they descend on the towns and cities. One cruel aspect of this beggary is that children and dwarfs are taken on daily wages and employed in the service of their handlers with some other terms and conditions already settled, like food, shelter and protection from police.
Based on my investigation and observations, beggary by children is an organized business, well managed and protected by the beggar mafia, which is often invisible and operates from behind the shadows. The key strengths they hold in this degrading system are physical control over the crossings that they sublet to beggar groups, coercive capacity to enforce renting times and drive off unwanted competitors, and connections with police to protect beggars from possible arrest or harassment. Actually, the police is part of the problem in systemized beggary, as they take a pre-determined cut from the proceeds. When pushed by the media, and sometimes, angry public, the police do make symbolic arrests of beggars and detains handlers that are quickly bailed out and are never successfully tried in the courts to get convictions. The mafia has hired lawyers that work as retainers for a monthly fee to rush to get these clients freed by the courts.
There are legally constituted and public-funded child protection bureaus in each province and in the federal territory with the mandate to remove children from begging sites and hold them in protection. Their families get their custody back often on false excuses that they were ‘lost’. There is yet another tragic dimension – which needs state-funded and supported investigation – into physically deformed beggars, to determine whether their limbs were deformed when they were babies and whether they were stolen from hospitals or other places. Sadly, Pakistani state and society have become used to witnessing children begging every day at crossings in every city. Those passing out money to them, in my view, have even more responsibility, as in their apparent show of charity, they are supporting and sustaining the cruel practice.
- Rasul Bakhsh Rais is Professor of Political Science in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, LUMS, Lahore. His latest book is “Islam, Ethnicity and Power Politics: Constructing Pakistan’s National Identity” (Oxford University Press, 2017).
Twitter: @RasulRais
