SMILE and Begging Laws: Can India Decriminalise Poverty?

Introduction

For decades, India has approached begging through two fundamentally different ideas.

One sees a person begging on the street as a public order problem. The response is removal, detention and punishment.

The other sees the same person as someone facing poverty, homelessness, disability, abandonment, unemployment or social exclusion. The response is shelter, healthcare, counselling, education, skills and livelihood support.

India currently has both approaches operating at the same time.

The Government of India is expanding the SMILE programme, formally known as Support for Marginalized Individuals for Livelihood and Enterprise, with a dedicated component for the comprehensive rehabilitation of persons engaged in begging. Its language is built around dignity, reintegration and sustainable livelihoods.

Yet anti beggary laws continue to exist across several states and Union Territories. Many are based on an older legal philosophy that treats begging itself as conduct requiring police intervention.

That contradiction makes the latest expansion of SMILE much more significant than a routine welfare scheme.

The real question is whether India is finally moving from criminalising poverty to addressing the conditions that produce it.

What Has Changed Under the SMILE Programme?

SMILE represents a clear shift in the vocabulary of government policy.

Instead of focusing primarily on removing people engaged in begging from public spaces, the programme focuses on identification, rehabilitation and social reintegration.

The rehabilitation framework includes shelter, medical care, counselling, education, skill development and support for economic empowerment.

The scale is also expanding.

By July 2026, the programme was operating across 216 cities. By the end of July, the government reported that ₹45.59 crore had been released since the scheme began and 10,446 persons had been rehabilitated, including 2,824 children.

The government intends to expand coverage further over the coming years.

These numbers matter, but the policy philosophy behind them matters even more.

A person on the street is increasingly being viewed as a citizen requiring state support rather than simply as someone violating public order.

That is a substantial change in the way welfare administration understands begging.

The Older Legal Framework Tells a Different Story

India does not have one uniform central law criminalising begging.

Instead, different states and Union Territories have enacted their own laws or adopted laws originally enacted elsewhere. The Union Government currently notes that 20 states and 2 Union Territories have enacted or adopted anti beggary legislation, though the contents and implementation of these laws vary considerably.

One of the most influential models has been the Bombay Prevention of Begging Act, 1959.

The Act represented an approach in which a person found begging could be arrested without a warrant, produced before a court and, under its original framework, detained in a certified institution.

Repeat instances could attract even longer periods of detention.

The underlying assumption was striking.

Begging was treated not merely as evidence of deprivation but as behaviour that the state could suppress through coercion.

This legal architecture carried forward ideas associated with older vagrancy regimes, where visible poverty was frequently understood as a threat to order rather than as a failure of social protection.

That philosophy sits uneasily beside the rehabilitation language of SMILE.

The 2018 Delhi High Court Judgment Changed the Debate

A major constitutional turning point came in 2018 through the Delhi High Court judgment in Harsh Mander v. Union of India.

The Court examined provisions of the Bombay Prevention of Begging Act that had been extended to Delhi.

It struck down several provisions that criminalised begging, finding that they could not survive constitutional scrutiny.

The reasoning was crucial.

The Court recognised that people may beg because the state has failed to provide adequate access to food, shelter, employment and other basic necessities.

Punishing a person for begging in those circumstances effectively punishes the individual for being poor.

This transformed the legal question.

Instead of asking whether begging creates inconvenience in public spaces, the constitutional inquiry became whether the state can punish someone for adopting a survival strategy when basic economic opportunities are unavailable.

The judgment connected the issue closely with Article 21 and the right to life with dignity.

It did not, however, protect organised exploitation.

Provisions dealing with forcing or employing another person to beg were treated differently. This distinction remains essential.

The law can target trafficking, coercion and exploitation without criminalising the person who is economically vulnerable.

The Supreme Court Has Now Strengthened the Dignity Approach

The constitutional direction became even clearer in September 2025.

In M.S. Patter v. State of NCT of Delhi, the Supreme Court examined conditions in institutions used for persons engaged in begging and placed dignity at the centre of the discussion.

The Court recognised that many people living in such institutions may be affected by structural poverty, social exclusion, mental health challenges, abandonment and other forms of vulnerability.

Its larger message was that these institutions cannot operate like prisons.

Their purpose must be recovery, protection and reintegration.

The Court called for a shift from social control towards social justice.

It directed improvements in healthcare, sanitation, nutrition, vocational training, legal aid, child protection, monitoring and accountability across such institutions.

The Union Government was also asked to create model guidelines for uniform implementation across states and Union Territories.

In April 2026, the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment unveiled Model Guidelines on Care, Rehabilitation and Management of Beggars and Shelter Homes.

This sequence is important for UPSC preparation.

The emerging constitutional direction is no longer simply about preventing abuse inside institutions. It is about redefining the purpose of the institution itself.

Article 21 Changes the Moral Logic of the Issue

Article 21 guarantees life and personal liberty.

Indian constitutional jurisprudence has long interpreted life as something greater than mere physical survival. It includes the ability to live with human dignity.

This becomes particularly important in the context of begging.

A person sleeping on a pavement, asking strangers for money or surviving without stable employment does not lose constitutional protection because their poverty is visible.

In fact, vulnerability increases the responsibility of a welfare state.

If someone begs because employment, housing, healthcare or family support has collapsed, punishment does little to address the underlying problem.

Removing the person from the street may make poverty temporarily invisible.

It does not eliminate poverty.

This distinction between removing poverty and removing poor people from public view is at the heart of the constitutional debate.

Rehabilitation and Criminalisation Cannot Comfortably Coexist

This is where the biggest policy contradiction appears.

At the national level, SMILE says the objective is rehabilitation.

At the state level, parts of India continue to retain anti beggary legislation shaped by a punitive tradition.

The result is two competing frameworks.

Under one framework, the person is a beneficiary.

Under the other, the person can become the object of policing.

Under one, the state seeks to restore livelihood and dignity.

Under the other, visible begging can trigger legal intervention.

A modern welfare programme cannot fully transform the treatment of begging if the underlying legal architecture continues to treat poverty itself as suspicious conduct.

Rehabilitation should therefore not become a softer label for involuntary removal.

A person cannot meaningfully be rehabilitated if the starting point is coercion without adequate legal safeguards.

Why Simply Repealing Every Law Is Also Too Simplistic

Decriminalising begging does not mean that the state should ignore everything associated with it.

There are situations involving organised begging networks, trafficking, exploitation of children, deliberate maiming, coercion and abuse.

These require strong criminal enforcement.

The important distinction is between punishing exploitation and punishing poverty.

A person forcing a child to beg should face the law.

A trafficking network using vulnerable persons for profit should face the law.

But an elderly person seeking alms because there is no income support should not automatically be placed in the same criminal category.

Good law must distinguish the exploited from the exploiter.

Failure to make this distinction can produce an ethically inverted outcome in which the most vulnerable person becomes the easiest person to arrest.

The Governance Challenge Goes Beyond Rescue

Another risk lies in measuring success primarily through the number of people rescued from begging.

Rescue is only the beginning.

A person may leave a shelter and return to begging if the economic reasons that caused the situation remain unchanged.

Sustainable rehabilitation therefore requires identity documents, bank accounts, healthcare, disability support, social security, housing assistance, skill training and actual pathways into employment.

For children, the response must centre on education, nutrition, protection and family assessment.

For elderly persons, pensions and long term care may be more appropriate than conventional skill training.

For persons with disabilities, accessible welfare and livelihood programmes become essential.

For individuals facing mental health or substance use problems, medical and counselling support may be more relevant than immediate employment.

A standardised solution cannot address every form of destitution.

The quality of rehabilitation must therefore be measured by what happens after a person leaves an institution, not merely by whether that person was removed from the street.

Federalism Makes Reform More Complicated

Begging also presents an interesting federal governance problem.

There is no single central anti begging law that Parliament can simply repeal to transform the entire framework.

Different states operate under different legislation.

This means national reform requires cooperation between the Union and the states.

The Union Government can develop model guidelines, finance rehabilitation, create digital systems and encourage convergence with existing welfare schemes.

But states must review their own laws and administrative practices.

This is why SMILE alone cannot complete the transition.

Policy reform must eventually be accompanied by legal reform.

Otherwise India could create sophisticated rehabilitation centres while retaining statutes that still allow vulnerable people to enter those institutions through coercive processes.

The Ethics Question: What Does the State See?

The issue also fits naturally into the Ethics paper.

Public administration is not merely about efficiency. It is also about the values through which the state interprets citizens.

When an administrator encounters a person begging, there are two possible responses.

One asks, how do we clear this person from the street?

The other asks, what circumstances brought this person here?

The first prioritises appearance and order.

The second prioritises empathy, dignity and substantive justice.

Compassion in governance does not mean abandoning regulation.

It means designing regulation around human circumstances.

A welfare state should be capable of protecting public spaces while refusing to treat poverty itself as evidence of criminality.

That balance represents constitutional morality in practice.

What India Should Do Next

The next stage of reform should align law with the direction already visible in welfare policy and constitutional jurisprudence.

States should review anti beggary statutes and remove provisions that criminalise begging merely because a person is poor or visibly destitute.

Laws against trafficking, forced begging and exploitation should remain strong and should be enforced more effectively.

Rehabilitation under SMILE should be voluntary wherever possible and supported by legal safeguards where institutional intervention is necessary.

Success indicators should move beyond identification and rescue numbers to include stable housing, education, employment, social security access and long term reintegration.

The new model guidelines for shelter homes should also be implemented consistently rather than remaining advisory standards with uneven state level enforcement.

Most importantly, policy must recognise that begging is often an outcome rather than the original problem.

Homelessness, disability, unemployment, family breakdown, exclusion, inadequate pensions and lack of healthcare can all push individuals towards street begging.

A serious solution must address those causes.

Conclusion

India's approach to begging appears to be moving through an important philosophical transition.

The older framework viewed visible destitution primarily as something to control.

The emerging framework increasingly treats it as a condition requiring welfare, rehabilitation and dignity.

SMILE represents an important institutional expression of that change. The Supreme Court's recent emphasis on dignified rehabilitation and the creation of national model guidelines strengthen it further.

But the transformation remains incomplete.

A state cannot fully claim to have moved beyond criminalising poverty while punitive anti beggary provisions continue to exist within parts of its legal system.

The real test of reform will therefore not be whether India can make its streets appear free of begging.

It will be whether fewer citizens are forced to beg in the first place.

That is the difference between managing visible poverty and confronting the conditions that create it.