He tells her to keep the baby for that day.

“Babies can earn double... Keep her crying and you’ll earn triple,” he says.

The girl joins several other children, most less than 10 years old, as they start their long working day, begging and/or hawking several cheap items like cotton buds, chewing gum and feather dusters (typically at traffic signals), banking on public sympathy, particularly for the infants. All the while, they are monitored by their adult handlers who can get physically abusive if the “collection” is poor.

Such scenes from the blockbuster Slumdog Millionaire that won eight Academy Awards last year are, unfortunately, not confined either to reel life or to Mumbai in India. Right under our noses, in downtown Ho Chi Minh City, such stories and scenes are played out, day in, day out (and night in, night out).

Surprisingly though, the infants here are rarely seen crying. Amidst the deafening din of traffic and other accouterments of city life, in the rain, on the pavements, scantily clad or with no clothes at all, in harsh sunlight and on chilly evenings, they seem to be fast asleep most of the time.

At the Nguyen Thi Minh Khai - Cach Mang Thang Tam crossroads, and many other intersections elsewhere in the city, the sight of two or three ragged, unkept kids, around five to six years old with one of them holding a sleeping infant, is common. Torn by pity and compassion, several commuters invariably give them some money, and this keeps the business going.

It is easy to say that giving alms to beggars only encourages them, but the “faint-hearted” among us find it difficult to ignore the kids and the infants.

We also find it easy to point our fingers at those who are supposed to deal with the problem, whether they are policemen and guards or this department or that. We find it easier still not to ask the really uncomfortable questions.

Why, as the country’s GDP gets higher and we become more modern, do we have more children begging on our streets, more stark poverty visible than ever before? Why, despite Vietnam being only the second country to sign the UN convention on the rights of children, are we seeing more children unable to attend school, and get adequate healthcare?

When the problem of child beggars was highlighted by the media around six years ago, there was a public outcry and several steps were announced by the authorities to tackle it. Now there has been a resurgence of the problem as well as the outcry, this time shriller because apparently little has been done by local authorities to find a sustainable solution.

While children and infants are “begging tools” for their handlers, healthy adults also eke out a living by begging, voluntarily. Their ways are creative and artistic as well.

Sometimes in the evening, while driving on streets in District 3, you may meet a young man with a flat-tire bicycle who will ask you for money to “fix my tire” when you are waiting for the light to turn green.

Maybe at around 11 p.m., on Nguyen Thi Minh Khai Street or some nearby roads, you will see a miserable looking young woman driving on a really rundown motorbike. She will catch you while you’re driving or walking, and ask for “some money to fill up my bike with petrol. My house is several dozen kilometers away and I have run out of money as I have been in the hospital for check-ups all day.”

Most people cannot resist helping out people in such situations, until later, in conversations with friends and relatives, they find their experience eerily similar to that of others’.

For Nguyen Nhan Chinh in Ho Chi Minh City’s District 3, the most fearful thing about not taking urgent action are not the continuation of begging scenes, but the loss of compassion for the poor and needy among the general public, according to Tuoi Tre.

“Once the pubic lose their belief and become indifferent to those who are unfortunate, it will be a disaster for society as a whole.”

By Tuong Nhi