"The next time you see someone begging on the streets," "pay close attention. " "In Andhra Pradesh, these begging gangs," "rented these children at about ₹300 per day. " "Children as young as 8 months" "were given sleeping pills," "to keep them sedated.
" "To keep them quiet the entire day. " "In Chennai, a begging racket was caught" "where women were dressed as Hindus in saffron clothes," "and told to beg in front of temples. " "Then these same women would switch costumes," "and beg in front of mosques," "dressed in burqas as Muslims.
" "It is a highly organised, sophisticated criminal network" "known as the Beggar Mafia. " "There are more than 400,000 beggars in our country," "of whom around 21% have studied till 12th grade. " "The census found that more than 3,000 beggars" "have a diploma or a degree.
" "Each day, a beggar earns so much" "that it will shock you. " Hello, friends! In the year 2022, a daily wage labourer, Suresh Manji, moved to Kanpur from Bihar looking for work.
He lived in Kanpur's Yashoda Nagar slum cluster. One day, he met a man named Vijay. He promised to find some work for him.
For this, he asked him to meet him under Kanpur's Jhakarkati bridge. The next day when Suresh reached there, someone approached him from behind, put a black cloth over his head and kidnapped him. After this, Suresh was intoxicated to get him unconscious.
And a chemical was injected into his eyes to make him blind. Along with this, Suresh's fingers were also cut and deep scars were left on his body. This was done to make Suresh 'suitable' to beg.
A few days later, Suresh was sold by this gang to a woman for ₹70,000. Later, a man named Raj brought him to Delhi on Gorakhdham Express. In Delhi, he was left at a place to beg.
These people would give Suresh and other beggars only two flatbreads a day, to ensure that they would remain thin to gain people's pity. Apart from this, every day, they would be tortured, and some chemical or the other would be injected into their bodies. With time, the cruelty reached a point where Suresh's body couldn't take it anymore.
He developed an infection. His condition was so bad that he couldn't even go out to beg. The gang that had bought him wanted a replacement for Suresh.
Seeing Suresh's poor health, Raj sent Suresh back to Kanpur with Vijay. But even in Kanpur, he was still being forced to beg. From the monring to the evenings, Suresh had to stand at the main squares of the city without a break.
To beg. And the money he collected by begging, at the end of the day, these kidnappers would take it all. A few months later, when Suresh's condition worsened, the kidnappers dumped him and left.
After that, somehow Suresh managed to reach his home but his condition was so bad that his family couldn't even recognise him. Friends, this isn't an imaginary story. Though AI videos were used to tell you this story, but this really did happen.
On the screen, you can see Suresh's real photos. Later, a local MLA helped his family file a complaint. After which, this story became public.
"They took him along and broke his limbs," "this was done to force him to beg. " "They broke his limbs at a remote location," "and kept him locked up in a house for 12 days. " "Later, they broke his teeth," "they even hurt his eyes," "after that he was left with a woman in a slum near Kanpur's bus stand.
" "There he was injected with deadly chemicals. " But Suresh's case is not an isolated case. It is a highly organised, sophisticated criminal network.
Which we can call it the Beggar Mafia. In India, organised begging is an industry worth ₹1. 5 trillion.
In this, hundreds of thousands of people, especially children and women are affected. When you give money to a beggar on the streets, where does the money go? How much does a beggar earn in a day?
How does this mafia work on such a large scale? And what are the solutions here? Come, in this video, let's understand this topic properly.
Before starting this video, I want to tell you that the spots for this month's AI Masterclass have been opened up. This is a 2. 5-hour-long live workshop.
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The link is in the description and this QR code. The exact date and time are mentioned in the link, but if you can't attend this workshop live, you can watch its recording over the next 3 days. Now, let's get back to our topic.
First of all, we need to understand who are these beggars and why are they begging? In 2021, the Institute for Human Development and the Delhi government's Department of Social Welfare published a joint report. They conducted a detailed analysis into this topic which revealed that there are two main reasons behind begging.
Helplessness and choice. Most of the people who beg, they started because of their helplessness. Around 62% of beggars beg because of poverty, 45% because of unemployment, 24% because of old age, being disabled or sick, 6% og the beggars are widowed women, and 3% beg because of drugs and other addictions.
During the COVID-19 lockdown, many people were pushed towards begging after they lost their jobs. But there are some who beg by choice. They do not beg because they are helpless.
They beg because that's what they want to do. Around 12% of the beggars consider it easy money. 7% do it out of habit.
And 6% beg for hereditary reasons. And then about 3% of the people beg for religious reasons. This report and survey also found that, about 20% of the beggars, do some sort of part-time work in addition to begging.
Some are labourers, some collect garbage, some are street vendors, some drive rickshaws, some work as security guard, boot polishers, car cleaners, and even as helpers. But there's no job guarantee, and it pays too little, so they beg to make some additional money. Now, since we're talking about their earnings, there's a lot of misconception on social media about this.
What do you think? How much does a beggar earn per day? Comment below with what you think.
You can pause the video here. The report says that 32% earn less than ₹100 per day. 33% earn between ₹100-₹200 per day.
22% earn between ₹200-₹400 per day. And only 1% of the beggars earn more than ₹400 per day. Even if you assume that they beg every single day, still, the monthly income of the majority of them won't be more than ₹3,000-₹6,000.
Compare this with the official minimum wage of an unskilled labourer in Delhi, which is ₹15,908 per month. They earn so little. And think about it, many of them are victims of some mafia.
So they can't even keep the money they get. At the end of the day, they have to hand over all of the money to their gang leader. To understand how the mafia operation works, first, we need to understand how are these people recruited.
Organised begging rings target the most vulnerable people. Their prime targets are children. Many children are kidnapped, trafficked, and sometimes, they make false promises to poor families to get them to sell their children to the mafia.
Approximately 60,000 children disappear every year in India. And a large number of these children are then forced to beg. Some gangs often rent children to make them beg.
Desperate poor parents who have no other sources of income rent out their children in exchange for some money. "Hey, hey, why are you arguing about that child? " "I've told her so many times," "if she walks around with a chubby, beautiful kid," "who will give her money?
" "No one will pity her. " -"My child. " -"We need to pay lower rent for this.
" "Why will you pay lower rent? " "If you can't afford it, let it be. " "I'll have my child work at another signal.
" For example, in Andhra Pradesh, begging gangs used to rent babies for around ₹300 per day. And they used to sedate these babies with opium or sleeping pills to prevent them from crying and keep them calm the entire day. Another example, a Kolkata-based begging ring, involving Bangladeshi and Indian members.
children up to the age of 8 were kidnapped from rural areas, and made to beg in trains and stations. In one case, infants were given cough syrups to keep them intoxicated. This is trafficking.
These children are never told about education and their basic rights. These handlers often do not feed the children to keep them thin and crying. Drwing more sympathy from the public, and more money.
I won't discuss the more terrifying cases because there are a lot of disturbing details in Suresh's story. Things that happened to Suresh, are often done to the children by some of these gang members. The begging mafia treats begging like a business.
Getting people to pay as much as possible and maintaining control over the beggars using different ways. There's also some territorial control. These gangs divide the cities among themselves.
The gangs know where beggars would get the most money. Near temples, mosques, at train stations, bus stands, places with a lot of footfall. These gangs know which beggars beg in which areas.
And if a beggar wants to beg independently, without being a part of any gangs, he has to struggle a lot. Because these gangs know a lot of things that an independent beggar doesn't know. "Here, the rule is," "if you pay promptly every week," "then the municipality, police, no one would bother you.
" "Everyone pays up," "and then do their business without any worries. " These gang leaders talk to each other and plan for different events and festivals. It's not like every gang behaves cruelly and dehumanises the beggars.
In Chennai, an elderly beggar said that the leader of their group would collect everyone's earnings every evening and distribute it among all the members equally after taking out his share. And in exchange for this share, the leaders would plan what to do and how. They give tips to the beggars about the different religious festivals and functions in the city.
They were told how to reach those places. Like if someone is getting married in the city or if someone is going to have some other function. This game is being played on a level that it gets difficult to imagine for an average person.
They keep on fine-tuning their tactics. There was a case in Chennai where women were sent to the temples dressed as Hindus in saffron robes. And those same women were later dressed as Muslims in a burkha and sent to beg in front of mosques.
The Hindus and Muslims who went to the temples and mosques, their generosity was being targeted, by changing the appearances of the beggars. This news is from 2010. A 13-year-old boy, Bheemappa said that once, at a traffic signal, a woman in a car, saw him shivering in the rain with an 8-year-old child.
Seeing the situation of the children, the woman pitied them and gave ₹100. But what happened after that? The other beggars and their gang leaders found out that this could also be a technique of emotional manipulation.
Then they began to deliberately send the children to beg in the cold rain. This led to the death of a two-year-old child, Pooja. Because she caught cold after getting drenched in the rain.
Their strategies rely significantly on drugs too. Let's take a look at 14-year-old Javed's story. He begs near the old Hanuman temple in Delhi's Connaught Place, and earns around ₹10-₹20 daily.
He gives most of the money to his so-called friend, who supplies drugs to him. These gang leaders get these children hooked on drugs so that they can go into debt. After that, they give them drugs only when they are willing to beg and hand over all the money they get.
This is another way to keep the children trapped. In some cases, the parents also force the children to beg, and if they don't bring home any money, they are met with abuse. In 2023, Hyderabad, 28-year-old Anil Pawar was caught for recruiting beggars and making them beg in posh areas.
By each evening, he could collect up to ₹6,000 from the beggars, out of which he used to give only ₹200 to each beggar as wage. Many times the Begging Mafia has political backing too. When NGOs in Andhra Pradesh tried to rescue the children, the local politicians protected the Begging Mafia.
Look at this news from 2017. NGOs revealed how difficult it is for them to work because of the high political pressure. In 2009, a strange incident came to light in Bengaluru.
where a nanny who was looking after children from a rich family would dress the child in old, torn clothes, give him drugs to sedate him, and hand him over to the beggar gang for ₹100 a day. The parents assumed that their child was spending a good time with the nanny whereas, actually, the child was being rented out during the day. This should tell you how far and wide the reach of this organised begging mafia is.
In such a situation, the question arises what is the government doing to stop all this? The first law against begging in independent India, was the Bombay Prevention of Begging Act, 1959. As per this, any person caught begging could be sentenced to imprisonment for up to 10 years.
Under this, a chief commissioner could take the beggars in custody and order them to be put in an institution and can keep them there for as long as they want. When this law was implemented, many homeless people were kept in these institutions for a long time. Many people criticised this law.
This act was inherently wrong because the begging gangs and organisers weren't affected while the beggars bore the brunt of all the punishment. The beggars who were victims of these begging gangs. That's why in 2018, the Delhi High Court declared some sections of this Act unconstitutional in Delhi.
And asked to decriminalise begging. The court said that people don't beg on the streets of their own will. Rather, this is the last way for them to survive.
And it is the government's job is to provide basic facilities to all citizens. And the mere existence of beggars proves that they have failed to do so. But in many states like Maharashtra begging is still a crime.
After the law made for Mumbai in 1959, different states came up with similar laws. The central government hasn't made any direct laws on begging yet. But there is a Juvenile Justice Care and Protection of Children Act of 2015, as per this, having a child beg, or begging with the help of a child is illegal.
The ban on begging was discussed in the Supreme Court in 2021. But the court refused to do so stating that it is a socio-economic issue. It repeated the same thing that the Delhi High Court had said.
No one wants to beg, but because of poverty, one has to beg. But even after this, in most cases, the governments hasn't focused on taking action against these gangs. Rather, they've focused on taking action against these victims, these beggars.
Whenever there's any big international event, instead of solving the problem, the government tries to cover it up. Like in 2023, during the G20 Summit, in Delhi, beggars were rounded up and temporarily put in shelter homes so that they could be hidden from the world. there was a temporary ban on begging in the city and the police rounded up all beggars and put them in a rehabilitation centre.
Apart from this, during these events, large curtains are often put up outside many localities and slum areas. So that the people travelling on these roads won't be able to see, and all these problems could remain hidden. Previous governments have also done the same.
In 2010, during the Commonwealth Games held in Delhi, hundreds of beggars were forcibly loaded into trains and trucks and sent to other cities. They were told not to return until the Games were over. This begs the question, what is the real solution to this problem?
The real solution is to rescue the beggars, and keep them in government-run shelters and reform homes for some time. After that, it should be decided whether these people should be sent back to their families or not. If not, then the government needs to establish child care institutions to provide them with counselling, education, and training.
To give them a real option to work in the future. Many governments have tried to do this actually, but the implementation had been a complete failure. For example, the Delhi government made a rehabilitation centre for the beggars in the Lampur village.
It was built decades ago. It has 5 houses and 70 rooms, and 1,500 people can be housed there. When beggars were caught begging, they were sent here for 1-3 years.
In 2010, 200 beggars were rehabilitated here. Which is much lower than the actual capacity. But over the next years, its condition kept on deteriorating.
In 2014, only 60 beggars were sent there. Only one in 2016, And since 2017, no beggar was sent there. Whereas, you will find beggars at Delhi's every corner.
In 2020, the Union Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment began a pilot project. They aimed to make 10 Indian cities 'beggar-free. ' These cities included Indore and Mumbai.
But how was it actually implemented? In Indore, an order was passed that making begging and giving money to beggars illegal from 1st January 2025. And an FIR will be filed against those who give them money.
In January 2025, someone was giving money to a female beggar in front of a temple, someone else saw this, and filed an FIR. This became the first case in Madhya Pradesh where someone gave money to a beggar and an FIR was registered against the giver. After Indore, even in Bhopal, begging and giving money to beggars was prevented in public places.
But the question here is, is banning begging a real solution? As long as there's high unemployment, there aren't enough jobs, disabled people have even fewer chances of being involved in our economy. If these people aren't even allowed to beg, what do you expect?
Do you want them to die a silent death? The 2011 census revealed that there were more than 400,000 beggars in our country. Of them, 21% had studied till 12th grade.
And about 3,000 beggars had a professional diploma or degree. Despite having a degree, why would anyone beg? Because they have no other option.
And taking advantage of this helplessness, the beggar mafia exploits them even worse. Helpless people who beg, don't get any sympathy because of the beggar mafia. Obviously, after knowing all this, the next time you see a beggar, you'd either be desensitised to them, believing that thay are a part of the mafia and ignoring them or on the other hand, you will feel helpless.
Though you pity the children what could you do realistically? Even if you give them money, it will go to the beggar mafia. And giving them money means adding to the further exploitation of these children.
Here, the first thing I'd like to say is that friends, you need to remember that not every beggar is a part of a beggar mafia. Many people are driven to begging due to poverty and unemployment. And are not connected to any gang.
Secondly, I'd say that you shouldn't give cash to the beggars. Because it will be difficult for you to identify whether the beggar is working independently, out of helplessness, or if he is a part of a larger beggar mafia. So don't give them money.
But you can help them in other ways. If you feel that they are hungry, then you can give them food directly. Apart from this, you can give them clothes or medicines since those will be directly beneficial for them.
If you have more time, you can get out of your car and talk to them in detail. You can listen to their problems. And then, if you feel like it, you can give them some work.
If you can't do anything except giving money, then give it to the NGOs that are trying to rehabilitate the beggars and focus on their skill development. Additionally, you can help the programmes that support children's education. Many NGOs work to educate poor children.
One of them is Teach for India. It offers a two-year fellowship programme. If you are a college graduate or a working professional, you can teach these children in your free time.
If you see children begging, and you notice multiple children injured similarly, if a child is intoxicated, or you see a person collecting money from the beggars, in such cases, inform the police about this. Finally, remember to treat beggars respectfully. If you talk to them, talk nicely.
Look them in the eyes, ask their name if they're okay with it. And do not judge them. Remember, most beggars are victims of human trafficking, exploitation or poverty.
This problem can be solved on a larger scale only when the government takes action. Begging must be decriminalised. The scope of welfare schemes must be widened.
To see the impact of the schemes, technology must be used for proper monitoring, and people must be rehabilitated in a way that their participation in society increases. The link to join the AI Masterclass is given in the description below. And if you liked this video, I have made similar videos on many socio-cultural topics.
A similarly interesting story is about the poor and unemployed people of Somalia. The country was struggling so terribly that people didn't even have the option to beg. And so, they were nearly forced to begin piracy.
They became the Somalian Pirates. Click here to find out more about their story. Thank you very much!
