Salahuddi Choudhry
World Population Day, 11th July, seeks to focus attention on the urgency and importance of population issues, enhance awareness of population issues, including their relations to the environment and development, and commemorate the Day in partnership with governments and civil society.
UNSG tells us: “While the world’s population overall continues to increase, this growth is uneven. For many of the world’s least developed countries, the challenges to sustainable development are compounded by rapid population growth as well as vulnerability to climate change. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is the world’s blueprint for a better future for all on a healthy planet. On World Population Day, we recognize that this mission is closely interrelated with demographic trends including population growth, ageing, migration and urbanization”.
As estimated, roughly 83 million people are being added to the world’s population every year. Even assuming that fertility levels will continue to decline, the global population is expected to reach 8.6 billion in 2030, 9.8 billion in 2050 and 11.2 billion in 2100, according to the medium-variant projection.
UNFPA works to support family planning by ensuring a steady, reliable supply of quality contraceptives; strengthening national health systems; advocating for policies supportive of family planning; and gathering data to support this work. UNFPA also provides global leadership in increasing access to family planning, by convening partners – including governments – to develop evidence and policies, and by offering programmatic, technical and financial assistance to developing countries.
Population Policy Development in Pakistan
We have had no explicit population policy till very recently, although population was implicitly mentioned in all of the 5 year developmental plans. These plans voiced concerns over the population growth as an impediment to development. Pakistan started one of the earliest population programs in Asia. Family planning activities began as early as the 1950’s through the auspices of the Family Planning Association of Pakistan, a Non-governmental organization (NGO) which originated in 1953.
The National Health Policy, including the 1990, 1997, and especially the 2001 policy, was set for the next 10 years to implement. However, none of these policies were implemented entirely in stipulated time.
Since its independence, we have had to grapple with many problems. The country currently ranks sixth among the world’s countries after China, India, the USA, and Indonesia, with a population growth rate of 3.1 per cent per year. The population is expected to rise from 210 million people to 240 million by 2030. Its population was 33 million in 1950 and its rank was 14th in the world, but now it has alarmingly increased.
Women here continue to have an average of four children. Not enough is being done to bring down the birth rate. One of the main causes really is ineffective family planning and population control programs over many years – as a result of which our population growth has continued more or less unabated. Consequence of fertility rates remained high and contraceptive needs have largely remained unmet. People in Pakistan regard continuing contraceptive practices as a bigger threat to their health than an occasional induced abortion. Men and women are reluctant to visit government family planning clinics because of a lack of infrastructure and information.
Successive governments have paid no attention towards family planning and the apathy led to rapid population growth that outstrips development gains. If we had had the same population as at independence, we would be much more prosperous now.
The country, arguably, is no more agrarian. And, this has happened for all the wrong reasons. While it did not have any policy to control exploding rates of population, a majority of the lands that are now being turned into villages, towns, and housing societies were once part of the country’s vibrant agricultural landscape. If the population rise continues to take place with the current pace, in a few decades, the country will face food insecurity.
UNESCO indicates that in the present scenario, one in four Pakistani children will not be finishing primary school by the deadline of 2030. It is a pathetic situation – educational facilities are growing, but not fast enough to cope up with population growth.
Major factors responsible for high population growth are high fertility, low contraceptive prevalence ratio, high unmet need of family planning, decreasing mortality, customs of early marriages, son preference, illiteracy especially of women and lack of women empowerment, religious restrictions, beliefs, customs, traditions and lack of recreational activities.
Family Planning Programs in countries in SE Asia were pretty successful: the best results by JAPAN followed by China, Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia. The most important factor has been the strong political will to curb population growth. First country to experience a revolution in reproductive behavior was Japan with below replacement level fertility by 1960. This was accomplished by massive postponement in age of marriage and rapid reduction in marital fertility.
The high fertility was bad for our country and for the family. In Asia, such programs did not fully
develop or succeed where they met religious opposition (as in the Philippines), politically expressed ethnic opposition (as in Malaysia), or feudal social structures (as in PAKISTAN). Similar programs were later developed in much of North Africa, in Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia.
Majority of countries made dramatic economic breakthroughs in the past 30 years drastically reducing the average fertility rate. Iran made it from 6.53 to 1.96 in a span of 30 years. Bangladesh came down from 6.92 to 2.1 during a span of forty years, while Korea (1.21), China (1.65) made similar impressive reductions. Regrettably, Pakistan has a very high fertility rate of 3.73 for only for the past four years.
If not immediately addressed, this single factor could negate every effort Pakistan may make to break away from poverty, hunger, disease and illiteracy.
Interestingly, in case of Bangladesh, it adopted a community-based approach to population planning. It was based on recruiting married, literate village women trained in basic community health and family planning going door-to-door dispensing contraceptive pills and condoms. Local villages had credibility among suspicious and very religious population. Importantly, giving high priority to girls’ education delayed marriages and gave women higher control in their lives.
