Economics of the Outstretched Hand

Begging is becoming an international problem now

At almost any traffic signal in Karachi, Lahore, or Islamabad, the same scene repeats itself. A child taps on a car window. A woman cradles an infant that may not be hers. An elderly man displays an injury that may not be real. Drivers look away, or they pay, and the light changes, and the moment is forgotten. What is rarely asked is the question that should follow every one of these encounters: who is actually receiving this money, and why has Pakistan allowed begging to become an industry rather than remaining a last resort of the truly desperate?

The scale of the problem is large enough that estimates vary wildly, and that variance itself is revealing. A research-compiled estimate places the number engaged in begging at 25 to 38 million, while the Asian Human Rights Commission puts the figure at between 2.5 and 11 percent of the population.

Pakistan cannot eliminate poverty through legislation alone, and it should not pretend that passport suspensions are a substitute for genuine economic opportunity. But it can stop subsidising an industry that has learned to monetise human suffering more efficiently than the state has learned to alleviate it. Until it does, the outstretched hand at every signal will remain less a measure of Pakistan’s compassion than a measure of its failure to distinguish charity from complicity

These numbers are contested and almost certainly inflate the true count of persons begging out of genuine destitution by conflating it with organised criminal recruitment. But even the more conservative estimates confirm something disturbing: begging in Pakistan is not primarily a story about individual misfortune. It is, in large part, a business, with bosses, territories, quotas, and victims who are frequently coerced rather than choosing this path freely.

The poverty backdrop is real and severe enough on its own to explain genuine begging. Pakistan’s own data shows nearly half the population struggling below internationally recognised poverty thresholds, youth unemployment running into double digits, and inflation that has repeatedly eroded what little purchasing power the poorest households retain. For a destitute family with no safety net, no vocational training, and no functioning welfare state to fall back on, begging is sometimes the only available option. This is the genuine tragedy buried inside the larger phenomenon, and it deserves compassion rather than cynicism.

But genuine destitution does not explain everything observed on streets, and treating it as though it does, lets a much darker enterprise operate undisturbed. Our defence minister, in a widely circulated statement this year, described begging as an organised profession with formal contractors who recruit children, women, and people falsely presented as disabled, generating earnings that have allowed some handlers to purchase homes. Children are documented as being drugged to appear sickly. Infants are reportedly borrowed or rented to maximise sympathy. Disabilities are, in some verified cases, deliberately inflicted to increase earnings. This is not poverty. It is trafficking, dressed in poverty’s clothing, and it thrives because the public cannot easily distinguish a victim of genuine destitution from a victim of organised exploitation.

The international dimension compounds the embarrassment. The Federal Investigation Agency confirmed offloading more than 66,000 passengers from departure gates in 2025 alone, suspected of travelling abroad, frequently under religious pilgrimage visas, to beg in Gulf states. Over 24,000 Pakistanis were deported from Saudi Arabia in a single year for this reason, with thousands more from the UAE and other countries.

Gulf governments have repeatedly raised this as a diplomatic irritant, and several have tightened visa issuance for Pakistani travellers as a direct consequence. The state has responded with passport suspensions and amendments criminalising organised begging as human trafficking, but enforcement against handlers, rather than the vulnerable people they exploit, remains rare.

The business logic of begging mafias is straightforward and explains why the practice persists despite criminalisation. A policy analysis from the Centre for Business and Society at LUMS found that professional begging can generate higher daily income than unskilled labour, particularly for handlers who control multiple beggars across high-traffic locations. Mafias charge for territorial rights at signals, shrines, and markets, enforce quotas through coercion, and extract a cut of every rupee collected. Religious giving, zakat and sadaqa given generously and often without scrutiny, particularly during Ramadan, has inadvertently subsidised this entire economy. Pakistanis are among the most charitable people in the world by some measures. That generosity, unaccompanied by any mechanism to verify where the money actually goes, has become the begging mafia’s primary source of working capital.

What should follow from this is not less compassion but better-directed compassion. Cash placed directly into an outstretched hand at a traffic signal cannot be traced, audited, or redirected toward the people who most need it. It can, and often does, finance exactly the criminal networks that perpetuate the cycle, by ensuring that exploiting a child remains more profitable than educating one. Channelling charity through verified NGOs, supporting genuine rehabilitation centres, which currently remain underfunded and understaffed, and demanding that law enforcement target handlers rather than performing token arrests of the exploited, would do more for Pakistan’s poorest than another generation of roadside donations ever will.

Pakistan cannot eliminate poverty through legislation alone, and it should not pretend that passport suspensions are a substitute for genuine economic opportunity. But it can stop subsidising an industry that has learned to monetise human suffering more efficiently than the state has learned to alleviate it. Until it does, the outstretched hand at every signal will remain less a measure of Pakistan’s compassion than a measure of its failure to distinguish charity from complicity.