THE story of a 13-year boy forced to steal some flour to feed his starving family in Mirpurkhas constitutes an abiding accusation of the inhuman and callous attitude the government, and indeed society as a whole, is displaying towards the deprived in the country. For, a former minister to have offered his brother a job in his mill and the nazim to have given the family provisions for the month after they came to know the circumstances that drove the boy to commit this petty crime - these are only sympathetic responses; but hardly the well though-out, far-reaching gestures that could help alleviate the sufferings of the people at large. The country's economic experts must put their heads together, do something to check the unending rise in the prices of goods of common man's use and work out a suitable programme of action factoring in the income level of the salaried and poor sections of society.