Begging's no longer limited to a few stray beggars driven to seeking alms as a last resort, says the Times of India. Photo: Heavenhated (flickr)

Calcutta's Laxmi Das was stricken with polio as a child, and raised in a society where people with disabilities are looked upon with pity. After 40 years of begging on the streets, Das recently opened her first bank account with her saved coins worth a total of 30,000 rupees or $700.

"I saved for the days when I cannot beg," she told the BBC, "I knew one day I would grow old and have diseases, so I was prudent and saved for my pension."

BBC.com visitors responded to Das’ heartwarming story with pledges of financial support. And who can blame them? People like Das beg because they have few other options.

But others are getting into the begging business because it's apparently lucrative. A variety of people are turning to begging not as a last resort, but as a profession. Now there are beggar pimps that send out children, women and the disabled (like Das), but also college graduates that are making a living off of begging. As an editorial in The Times of India points out:

“Begging's no longer limited to a few stray beggars driven to seeking alms as a last resort. It has become a profession for some, a way of life for others, and more horrific still, a lucrative racket for unscrupulous and ruthless operators, who have spawned a virtual ‘beggar mafia', using raw materials we have in abundance; human beings; poor, destitute and helpless.”

According to the Executive Director of Dnyana Devi, a local Indian NGO that runs a 24-hour helpline for children in distress, begging is considered “serious business” for the street children of India, so much so that they “know exactly which brands of cars to chase, how to ‘dress up’ to evoke maximum sympathy and how to fix false plasters on the legs to give the impression of being crippled.”

So far, India's response has been insufficient. The country has chosen to criminalize beggars under the 1959 Bombay Beggary Prevention Act, where they can be can be picked up at random and locked in a "beggars' home" for up to three years.

And while our sympathy and compassion will spare them some change, it is only a short-term solution that fails to address deeper underlying socioeconomic issues.

For the children who beg, receiving alms means that their parents are less likely to send them to school. For others it can confirm begging as an easy and valid means of making money.