10
As the World Population Day dawns, two images spring to mind: the first, news reports of Pakistan’s 180 million population, set to grow to 275 million by year 2050 — clearly unsustainable for this poverty-ridden country.
The second: a husband, anxiously parading up and down outside a labour room, thinking, “Girl or boy”, this sixth time. After repeated tries, all ending in lovely little girls, he’s at his wits end. A little later, a smiling nurse emerges, “Mubarak”, she says, you have a lovely baby daughter; they’re both doing well”. The husband looks disappointed and resigned….
Throughout the world, girls are as welcome as boys — except in Pakistan, India and China, where son preference is supremely important. Mystifying why, particularly when women are registering so much progress. Strong son preference, and numerous children, especially sons, are considered signs of male virility. Couples, even educated upper-middle-class and the rich, happily end up having four, five, or six children! Multiply the scenario by millions of couples across the country, and you have at least part of the answer to the population explosion.
Other reasons: roughly 40 per cent of births are unwanted ones, but there’s no remedy, once the child is conceived, except necessary treatment /abortion. Child marriages, of little girls below age 15, continue in an estimated 10 to 24 per cent of the population, coercing mere children to long reproductive life spans.
Responsible parenthood receives short shrift in Pakistan.
Today’s population programme needs consistent and forward-looking policy and programmatic inputs, long-term, sustained political commitment, and wider, holistic, more comprehensive focus. The ministries of finance, education, health, women, social welfare, the planning sector, rural and urban development initiatives should all be equally concerned about the problem.
Encouragingly, Pakistan’s population growth is headed downwards, though not as speedily as, say, Indonesia, Iran or Bangladesh, all predominantly Muslim countries. Service provision and facilities have improved in the government sector; widespread and comprehensive NGO inputs add to the progress, as, hopefully, the devolution process will do.
Nevertheless, worrisome negatives remain: high population density has led to crowded streets, transport and electricity hassles, strife, bomb blasts, high unemployment, inflation, poverty and a worrisome economic scenario. Poverty affects 54 per cent of the populace; 34 per cent are the poorest, surviving on a dollar a day, or less. It is critically important to address these factors with urgency.
Further, there are the imperatives of climate change, global warming, environmental degradation, and increasingly, psychological disorders. Water shortages and food insecurity are soon expected to reach the top of the international political agenda. Provisions for environmental safety, improved health, education, development and welfare-oriented socio-economic policies need to be alive to these and similar issues; all are linked to unsustainable population growth.
Curbing population growth will result in several bonuses: improved health status, particularly of women and children; decline in poverty levels and reduction in steeply high maternal deaths: Now, even the UN Human Rights Commission has stated that maternal health is a human right, making it incumbent for Pakistan to improve maternal health.
According to the Pakistan Society of Gynaecologists and Obstetricians, maternal deaths take 30,000 lives each year: truly a matter of grave concern. The most cost-effective solutions to this daily tragedy include urgent enhancement of family planning and greater attention to women’s health, easier availability and accessibility of facilities, and optimal comprehensive awareness of contraception.
Today, more than half the country’s population is under age 25 — a wonderful demographic dividend that has tragically been lost to illiteracy, poverty, poor health and drug addiction; and street children at risk of paedophilia, pornography, sale, and now, militancy.
Forward-looking policies could help these minds emerge to their full potential, with enthusiasm, creativity, determination, courage, talent — promising futures presently wasted, for want of visionary policies, facilities and funds. Unfortunately, repeated restrictions on social sector budgets have hampered development and reduced people to lives of poverty. That large cohort of young people is already turning into uneducated, angry, rebellious, jobless youngsters and equally large numbers of women, suffering poor health, lacking gender equality, education, and employment — all with an alarming political scenario.
A significant proportion of the public still has little or no access to critically needed contraceptive care. Actual utilisation of contraception has stagnated at just 30 per cent for several years, inevitably resulting in near-untrammelled population growth. Women’s fertility is still high, at 4.1 children per woman, marital fertility even higher. Pakistan is already outstripping its current resources as it struggles to provide for its citizens.
Limited inter-spousal communication, inadequate family planning facilities and contraceptive distribution are matched by the paucity of health care in many areas. The media, which could play a critically important role in changing this state of affairs, needs to be utilised to greater effect.
The government needs to live up to its commitments as promised at the International Conference on Population & Development,1994, reiterated in the Millennium Development Goals in 2000, and again promised in June 2009 at the UN Commission on Human Rights.
What are we doing to ourselves? Surely achieving faster progress in the population sector is an achievable goal. Our neighbouring countries have done it — what ails us?
