Two years in, SMILE scheme identifies fewer that 10,000 people engaged in begging; 970 rehabilitated
Two years after the Union Social Justice Ministry started identifying, surveying, and profiling people engaged in begging under the SMILE scheme, the programme has so far identified 9,958 such individuals across 81 major cities and towns where it is being implemented. In comparison, the 2011 Census had recorded 3.72 lakh beggars across the country.
As per records available with the Ministry, which runs the Support for Marginalised Individuals for Livelihood and Enterprise (SMILE) scheme, of the 9,958 persons identified, 970 have been rehabilitated. Of those rehabilitated, 352 were children as of December 2024.
The SMILE scheme was launched in 2022. One of its components was the sub-scheme to identify, profile, and rehabilitate individuals engaged in the act of begging with their consent. The other component of the scheme is for the empowerment of transgender persons. According to the guidelines for the sub-scheme to rid India of 'beggary', the idea was to 'make identified urban spaces, mainly religious cities, tourist places, and historical cities free from beggary'.
The scheme was started across 30 cities in Phase 1, which included cities like Ayodhya, Dharamsala, Amritsar, Gir Somnath, Giridih, New Delhi, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Nagpur, Gaya, Lucknow, Madurai, Kochi, Jammu, Srinagar, and Jaisalmer. In Phase 2, which began in the second year of its implementation, 50 more cities were added to this list.
The Socio-Economic and Caste Census of 2011, which the Social Justice Ministry continues to refer to in their 2024 Handbook on Social Welfare Statistics, estimated that over 6.62 lakh households in rural India rely on begging, or charity or alms.
According to the scheme guidelines, the target of the scheme was to rehabilitate at least 8,000 people in the three years between FY 2023-24 and FY 2025-26. The strategy for this involved looping in local government agencies down to the level of the urban local bodies and municipal corporations. It would entail identifying and surveying the people engaged in the act, outreach to them, their rehabilitation, and then their comprehensive resettlement.
The handbook for conducting the identification, profiling, and surveying exercise, says that local surveyors are expected to identify and survey about 25 individuals engaged in begging. The handbook asks the survey team to first photograph or video the person engaged in the act, and then 'approach the person in a friendly manner' to start collecting more information.
The latest guidelines for the sub-scheme said that an allocation of ₹100 crore had been made for it, to be spent over three years – from 2023-24 to 2025-26. According to the Social Justice Ministry's Annual Report for 2024-25, as of December 31, 2024, the government had spent ₹14.71 crore on this scheme.
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