TO put it bluntly, there are too many of us. Decades of failed or virtually non-existent family planning policies have put Pakistan on an alarming trajectory. According to a new UN report, World’s Population Prospects 2019, the global population is set to increase from 7.7bn today to 9.7bn by 2050, with over half the increase concentrated in only nine countries. Among them is Pakistan. A few more findings in the document should suffice to illustrate the disaster we are courting by our head-in-the-sand attitude to family planning. Taking latest census figures into account, this country of 217m people is now the fifth most populous in the world, up three notches since 1990. The nation’s demographic profile, specifically the number of people of reproductive age, means it will retain that ranking through to the end of the century by which time it will have an estimated population of 403m. In fact, the report notes that even if drastic family planning measures were instituted to immediately bring down global fertility rates to two births per woman, the number of deaths would still lag behind, and the world’s population would continue to trend upward.

Pakistan’s runaway population growth sabotages gains in almost all sectors of development and exacerbates existing challenges — economic, environment, health, education, etc. Tackling any of them without simultaneously addressing the unsustainable birth rate is a self-defeating, Sisyphean endeavour. The time for squeamishness and faux outrage in the matter is long gone. Countries with similar sensibilities, such as Iran and Bangladesh, have been single-minded in their efforts to bring down their birth rates; the results have been stupendous, offering a ‘demographic dividend’ of potentially accelerated economic growth. Even resource-rich Saudi Arabia has been more proactive and has a fertility rate of one child less than does Pakistan. Soon after coming to power, Prime Minister Imran Khan described population control as one of his government’s priorities, recalling the effectiveness of family planning TV campaigns in the 1960s in keeping the numbers down. Successive governments have often cited right-wing propaganda as being a hurdle to reducing the birthrate — a view contested by many experts in the field. The main problem is a lack of political will to implement a sustained campaign in which public messaging is clear and the availability of contraceptives is assured. Its absence thus far has gravely compromised Pakistan’s future. Family planning must be undertaken on a war footing.

Published in Dawn, June 21st, 2019