What happens to the rupees that Mr. Ashok gives to Balram in "The Sixth Night"?

The rupees, Balram says, ended up in a sewer in the slums: he followed the in-cement footprints of a small animal to a stinking river running thick with sewage and threw the money in. There, he describes a group of starving children scrambling through sewage to get their hands on a few extra rupees.