AMONG a host of problems like shortages of gas, electricity and clean drinking water we tend to ignore the main cause: the population growth.

No government will be able to solve these problems unless we control our population growth.

With a population of 190 million and a growth rate of 1.95pc the projected population in 2050 would be nearly twice as of today.

In a country like ours with scarce resources the population is a ticking bomb. we still haven’t catered about water scarcity which, if not addressed, would make us forget power outages.

To stop further depletion of our resources, we have to bring in effective family planning measures, at least to the standards of our neighbours like India and Iran, where the population growth rate is 1.3pc and 1pc, respectively.

Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio, subsistence only increases in an arithmetical ratio.

Wing Cmdr (r) Jamshed Savul
Peshawar

Published in Dawn, July 25th , 2014