Dire straits

IN Golarchi, District Badin, a man has sold his child for Rs 100 as soon as he was born. According to a private TV channel, a person named Laano sold his child, and delivered it within hours of birth to members of the Agwani tribe. The incident was reported to the police by the maternal uncle of the child, and then police action led to the recovery of the child and to the taking into custody of Farid Agwani. The child's mother, Hanifan, has disclosed that the people from the Agwani tribe came when she was unconscious, but still able to make out that they had come on a rickshaw, and then the foul deed was done. That Laano has a history of child-sale, having before sold a girl-child, should not distract from the fact that this has been an episode caused by poverty. Indeed, the whole of lower Sindh has been impoverished by the current economic crisis, and Badin is just one district among many which are at moment deeply afflicted.