Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has expressed concern at Pakistan’s population growth rate of 2.55 percent, and has said that a policy to control it was needed. He expressed these views at a meeting in Islamabad on Thursday to consider the subject of the challenges posed by population growth to planning. Now this is a favourite cop-out for bureaucrats: there are too many people, so existing facilities, like schools or hospitals are never enough. Besides, a rapidly increasing population is outstripping the ability of the land to feed them, while providing them jobs is a challenge. The bureaucratic solution is to reduce the population’s rate of growth. None have actually said so, but it almost seems they hark back to the ‘good old days’ of less people.
Actually, while a growth rate of 2.55 percent might seem very high, it represents a decline from the 3 percent figures of the 1980s. That means existing population control programmes are working.
Progress is slow for two reasons. First, progress is bound to be slow, unless there is a huge loss of population, through war, epidemic or famine. Second, population growth only exists in the aggregate; basically it is about a couple deciding to have a child. No one has ever refrained from having a child because of the national interest. Couples have avoided having children for economic reasons, but everyone feels entitled to two. The most the state can do is ensure the availability of contraception. There are also religious reasons why people avoid contraception. Those reasons are not insurmountable, and need government attention. One of the most interesting studies has been of immigrants with high reproductive rates to the West, which has low rates. The generation born in the West follows Western patterns.
More than population control, the Prime Minister needs to think of how to handle what might be a lost generation. There has been talk of a demographic dividend, of a young population of working age, which will support the rest. The problem is that these young people must be trained, educated, equipped with the right skills, and that has not been done. It may be noted that one of the most effective population control methods has been education, especially of girls. The issue is one that demands careful handling, because it involves as invasive an entry as possible into as intimate an area of life as is possible by the government.
j2xjxs
ebaht3