November 03, 2008	Monday	Ziqa'ad 4, 1429

KARACHI: What do you do when you do not want anything? Abandon it, throw it away or give it to someone else. But how can someone, let alone a parent, treat a child in the same way? Children exude love and affection and need to be cherished and brought up with care in a protected and secure environment.

But, unfortunately, in our society circumstances have become such that parents are forced to abandon or sell their children for a few hundred rupees. But even selling or giving away would appear to be a lesser crime when compared to abandoning them or leaving them to die in drains or on garbage dumps.

A recent report in these pages about the finding of bodies of newborns – not one or two but five in a month in Karachi alone – must have touched many a heart.

One is left wondering how people can become so heartless as to leave newborn babies, their own flesh and blood, to die miserably; what may be the factors that force parents to act in such an inhuman way.

It is a fact that unemployment, poverty and increasing food prices have hit the country badly and the poor are finding it immensely difficult to feed their children, what to talk of educating them or putting decent clothes on their bodies.

There have been reports where parents have been forced, due to poverty, to sell their children. The birth of a child means another mouth to feed; and with limited, rather decreasing, resources, it is often not possible, which might force the parents to take drastic steps.

It is also suspected that young unmarried mothers leave their children to hide their guilt and shame.

The increase in the number of cases in recent months points more to the worsening economic conditions of the country and resultant increase in poverty; the number of people living below the poverty line has increased recently rather than decrease.

Due to unjust distribution of wealth and resources, the rich are getting richer and the poor poorer. It is a sad situation that, on the one hand, people spend lavishly on luxuries, throwing away thousands on frivolities, their single meal costing hundreds of rupees, and, on the other, in the same country people do not have enough to satisfy their huger and kill their children just because of poverty.

The situation also demands that the government take measures to reduce economic pressures on the people so that they are able to take better care of their children and not leave them to die just because they are unable to meet their needs.

In today’s modern world nothing can be more tragic than the situation where children are not given a chance to live; their lives are snuffed out as soon as they begin and that too only because of the fear that their needs would be difficult to meet.

Whatever may be the factors for such cruel behaviour, it shows that we have turned into a morally degraded nation where human values have lost their importance; where needs have taken precedence over love and affection; where most people are left striving to make both ends meet. And when they fail to do so, it can lead them to take steps reminiscent of the Dark Ages.