The Menace of Beggary in Pakistan

A father, buying his child a cornet at the ice cream barrow; this event would surely seem so very casual to most of us. But, the very spectacle is heartrending for the kids who stroll by the streets bare footed, jump up to every other car at the traffic signals and look at every passer-by with desperate eyes. He too might have been standing on the outskirt of the gathering around the same ice cream barrow longing for it. With empty pockets he might have stood there all the time waiting for that miraculous moment when the ice cream man would have seen him and offered him a cone or a slider for free. He might have been standing outside a furnished sweetshop, with watering eyes instead of mouth, and this is all by the virtue of his pocket which cannot afford it. He has some money with him, but cannot spend it because he has to submit it to his master or his parents for he is the only one to feed the entire family, because his parents have proved to be too lazy for a job.
We pass by several such children every day, but have we ever tried to be ‘Human’ enough and has it ever bothered us who they actually are? Seated most comfortably in our Mercedes or Corolla, we shoo them off when they approach us. Just recall the kid you snubbed last time at a traffic signal after he or she knocked at your car windowpane. We watch them daily raising their little hands before strangers and most of the time they are screamed at. Isn’t it possible that these little beggars are just another group of harassed victims? Or worse, the ugly face of a bonded life, deliberately existing in our country. Have you ever given a thought that what compels such children to beg even in the extreme weather conditions? These are the very people whom we think are an extra burden to the country, or as useless tiny creatures. At this point, where have all our education, generosity, social services and voluntarism been forsaken?

I, one day, offered a child of the kind, some sweets that I was about to