Population Council

Whatever happened to the demographic dividend?

After several decades of hearing about how disastrously high our population growth was, we were told instead we were about to reap a demographic dividend. In short, it was said that the population was growing, but it was young, tech-savvy and if prepared properly, ready to lead the country into a new era of prosperity and plenty. There was a catch, though: this burgeoning population had to be educated, and that too in line with the needs of tomorrow, needs which could only be discerned by a few futurologists already sitting in ivory towers. There was to be no more of the old-fashioned rote learning, crushing of original thought, and frightening classrooms, because this huge demographic dividend would only be produced if this flood of children was educated properly. The government seems to have abandoned the idea and gone back to good old family planning, and has formed a National Population Council, with the PM, the provincial chief ministers, the GB CM and the AJK PM as members.

At the meeting which decided this, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif sounded like the rulers of old, who viewed population growth as an unmitigated evil, eating away at the fruits of development. It is true that population growth means development never ends. For example, a school once built becomes overcrowded, and more buildings are needed for more sections. Ultimately, one really must build a new school. Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal put in a word about the iniquity of population as a basis for determining divisible pool share. It seems as if the government has given up on educating the burgeoning population. A significant warning was sounded by the Sindh CM in a TV interview that population control was a provincial subject, devolved back by the Eighteenth Amendment, and the new Council could coordinate policy, but the executive authority remained with the provinces.

Worldwide experiences with population control have shown that families cannot be planned by anyone except families. The couple decides how many children they will have and when. State intervention may be intrusive and have unintended consquences. Is the population control idea merely the result of a white fear of a world overrun by brown or black babies, and was the demographic dividend merely the result of trying to live with choices already made, some more than a decade ago? The government should concentrate more on providing the resources needed for the people, however many there are, and stay out of family decisions.