'Help,' appealed columnist Javed Qazi of the Hyderabad newspaper Ibrat, late last Friday evening. 'Qadir Bux, legally and lawfully married to Shaista Almani, residents of Pano Aaquil, Mirpur Mathelo, now hiding somewhere in Karachi, are being sought by the sardars of their area and are in danger of losing their lives.' A jirga was meeting in Mirpur that day to decide their fate.

Under what law, one asks? Under no law, is the answer - under an archaic, ancient, outmoded, obscurantist tribal custom known as karo kari. The jirga leaders: the elder brother of the chief minister of Sindh, Ali Gohar Maher, sardar of his tribe, Nazim of Ghotki, and Khalid Ahmad Lund, sardar of his tribe and the honourable minister of state for water and power of the government of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. President General Pervez Musharraf obviously took a long hard look before selecting his ignorant graduates.

However, so far, so good, confirmed Sindh IG Kamal Shah. The couple had sought the help of the police at Madadgar 15. Fortunately, they fell upon considerate officers, Sanaullah Abbasi, TPO, Saddar Town, and Omar Shahid Hamid, ASP, Civil Lines. They were produced before an equally considerate magistrate, Xth Judicial Magistrate (South) Rehmatullah Mooro, who ordered that they be kept in safe custody. They (and all of us) must be grateful that there are a few good decent men who officiate and act in our administration.

But for how long can the young couple be kept safe; how long will they manage to survive and if they do under what circumstances?

Now to a 'core issue', not the dead Kashmir core, but problems that with will, good intent, and honesty of purpose can be alleviated - illiteracy and over-population.

During the three-year term of the unadulterated Musharraf government population control was never on the agenda. It did not figure in the scheme of things, though the burden of Pakistan's crippling birth rate has been for decades one of the factors holding it back on all fronts - and this in spite of the fact that evergreen expert on population control, Attiya Enayetullah, was very much a part of that government.

Now, of course, with President General Pervez Musharraf's diluted form of government, and with the non-functional assemblies, ministers and minions alike are involved with issues of far more import than governance, population control, education, human development and other such mundane matters. The LFO and the army uniform provoke total preoccupation, daily protest meetings, drawing-room gatherings of unbending minds, walk-outs, shouting matches, lethargy and inaction.

And then there is the matter of how to spend the generous development funds handed out to the honourable representatives. The unprecedented number of women elected to the assemblies, on which many initially pinned great hopes, are all caught up in this unending routine and it seems they cannot or do not wish to contribute to the betterment of the condition of the less privileged members of their sex.

The two most vital needs of this country, if progress and development of any sort is to be made, are education and population control that, like the chicken and the egg, must be inseparable. By upping the education of their females and by making a concerted and serious effort on the population control front, India, with a Muslim population greater than ours, has progressed not only on these two fronts but overall, as has Bangladesh, a fellow Islamic nation, both of which were drowning in overpopulation and illiteracy. Other Islamic nations have tackled the population problem without having a revolution on their hands, and without having to succumb to pressure from their local Islamic firebrands.

According to a recent report in the Wall Street Journal, Tunisia is one fellow Muslim country that by its dedication to population control has transformed itself and is now actually taken as a model for other developing countries. Credit goes to Habib Bourguiba, who as far back as the 1950s, launched a birth control campaign and sustained it.

He was determined to create a society based on a modern interpretation of Islam (as Musharraf now insists that he lays great stress on creating a modern and progressive Pakistan), and to do so Bourguiba knew he needed to attack the high birth rate in his small country. Reducing the birth rate went hand in hand with social change and Tunisians benefited both personally and socially. Women were educated, they thus had no hang-ups about limiting the number of children they produced, and they were brought into the workforce.

Ten million dollar is dedicated each year to teaching Tunisian citizens about the benefits and techniques of family planning. With persistence, religious and social hurdles have been overcome. The clerical fraternity was rightly convinced that the practice of birth control had absolutely no anti-Islamic connotations, and they willingly lent their active participation to its propagation, issuing Quranic statements favourable to the cause.

Friday sermons in mosques continue to often dwell on reproductive health and such subjects. Men, women and schoolchildren are taught about contraception, and mobile family-planning teams cover every corner of the country spreading the word and distributing contraceptive aids.

Tunisia was the first Arab country to enforce a specific population policy. Polygamy was banned, marriage for girls before the age of 17 and for boys before the age of 20 was made unlawful, government subsidies for families were limited to the first four children, and abortion was made legal. It is generally easier, in developing countries, to gain the acceptance of family planning by women, as men tend to have the wrong ideas about its effects.

The Tunisian government has launched a programme to instruct men, from the cities to the most underprivileged corners of the land, as to how it can improve their lives and how it has none of the adverse effects they fear.

The results: the fertility rate is down to 2.08, the per capita income has risen to $ 2,070, the annual growth rate is 5 per cent. Bourguiba's successor has continued and expanded the good work and right now Tunisia devotes 18 per cent of its GDP to social programmes, family planning, and the furtherance of women's rights.

The key to progress is a controlled population - a key we badly need with our population fast spiralling out of control despite the official annual birth rate figures that, as with all official statistics, no one believes. And the key to population control is the education of women. With the greater majority of women being illiterate, there is no hope of their being able to comprehend either how to go about it or what benefits will accrue, and how to deal with their men folk

With all our various commissions, which down the years have made recommendations on the state of women in this country and their lack of rights, the stress has generally been on the iniquitous laws that apply to women on the one hand, such as the Hudood ordinances, and on the other hand their lack of legal protection in cases such as the shameful murders euphemistically known as 'honour' killings.

One can safely say that on an average there are half a dozen press reports each week informing us of deaths due to this demeaning practice. Absolute importance has to be placed on the one basic and important right - women's right to education which can lead not only to their gaining some control over the size of their own families but which will also enable them to understand how and why their fundamental and legal rights apply and how to go about ensuring that they gain and keep these rights. Educated women can transform a society and a country in so many different and advantageous ways.

But we are not moving, neither in this direction nor in any other.

e-mail: arfc@cyber.net.pk