Children are more likely to appeal to the sympathy of those inclined to give to beggars, so those who beg use children for this purpose. Worse, sometimes, as in this case, a child is starved and carried about by the child’s parent while she begs on the streets, or rented out to another beggar to be used as an object of sympathy. Sometimes these extra funds are used to feed other children. Thus, in practice, one child is sacrificed for the sake of others.
Two-year-old Sangeeta, starved while her sister sleeps in comfort, has since been helped by the Tong-Len Charitable Trust’s mobile medical clinic at the Charan slum settlement, in Dharamsala, India. But according to the World Bank, 19,000 children under the age of five die a day from preventable causes.