Pakistan’s population surges to 207.7 million, critical stage
RAWALPINDI, Pakistan: For years, Pakistan’s soaring population growth has been evident in increasingly crowded schools, clinics and poor communities across this vast, Muslim-majority nation. But until two weeks ago, no one knew just how serious the problem was. Now they do.
Preliminary results from a new national census - the first conducted since 1998 - show that the population grew by 57 per cent since then, reaching 207.7 million and making Pakistan the world’s fifth most populous country, surpassing Brazil and ranking behind China, India, the United States and Indonesia. The annual birthrate, while gradually declining, is still alarmingly high. At 22 births per 1,000 people, it is on a par with Bolivia and Haiti, and among the highest outside Africa.
“The exploding population bomb has put the entire country’s future in jeopardy,” columnist Zahid Hussain wrote in the Dawn newspaper recently. With 60 per cent of the population under age 30, nearly a third of Pakistanis living in poverty and only 58 per cent literate, he added, “this is a disaster in the making.”
Even if the birthrate slows, some experts estimate that Pakistan’s population could double again by mid-century, putting catastrophic pressures on water and sanitation systems, swamping health and education services, and leaving tens of millions of people jobless - prime recruits for criminal networks and violent Islamist groups.
But instead of encouraging fresh ideas over the population crisis, the census has triggered a rash of arguments over whether certain areas have been over- or undercounted, or reclassified as urban instead of rural. These squabbles amount to fights over political and financial spoils, including the number of provincial assembly seats and the amount of funding from the central government.
A few people, however, are paying close attention to the larger picture. One is Shireen Sukhun, a district officer for the Population Welfare Department in Punjab province. Her mission is to persuade Pakistani families to have fewer children and offer them access to contraceptive methods, but she is keenly aware of the obstacles.
“The fatal combination we face is poverty and illiteracy,” Sukhun said. “It takes a long time to change people’s mindsets, and we don’t have the luxury of leaving it to time.”
One outpost in her campaign is a tiny bench-lined room in Dhoke Hassu, a congested workingclass area of Rawalpindi. Inside, Rubina Rehman, a family welfare worker, listens all day to women’s problems with feverish babies, painful deliveries and other woes. Once they feel comfortable with her, she broaches the topic of contraception.
It has not been an easy sell. All the clients are Muslims, and most have little education. Some have been taught that God wants them to have many children. Some have husbands who earn too little to feed a large family but keep wanting another child. Some would like help but are too shy to discuss a taboo topic.
“When we first opened this post, women were frightened to come, and some people asked why we were against increasing the ummah (Muslim masses),” Rehman said. “But we explained how the prophet taught that you should have a gap of 24 months between each child, and that you should consider the family’s resources when making decisions. Now we do not face such opposition.”
On Thursday, a dozen women crowded into Rehman’s office, some carrying infants or toddlers. Several leaned close and whispered to her, then slipped packets of birth-control pills into their purses. One woman named Yasina, 35, explained proudly that she had gotten an “implant” - a hormone dose injected under the skin that prevents conception for several years. “I already have five children, and that is more than enough,” she said. At first she had agreed to a tubal ligation, which the government arranges at no cost, but her husband, a labourer, would not allow it. “So I got the implant instead, and I
The fatal combination we face is poverty and illiteracy. It takes a long time to change people’s mindsets, and we don’t have the luxury of leaving it to time. – Shireen Sukhun, a district officer for the Population Welfare Department
didn’t tell him,” she said, bursting into laughter as the other women smiled.
“If half of our population is young, what will happen to their lives, their jobs, their needs?” mused Rizvi Salim, 29, a government railways employee carrying his only child, a twoyear-old girl, in his arms. Salim said that he was raised with seven siblings but that today “things have changed. We do believe that God will take care of us all, but we also need to plan for our futures.” Attempts to open rural family welfare offices are often met with community suspicion and political opposition, but health officials say more mothers are asking about birth control. The remaining major taboo, they said, is permanent contraceptive practices such as vasectomies or tubal ligations.
In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, the population nearly doubled from 17.7 million in 1998 to 30.5 million this year. The province is home to several million Afghan refugees, numerous Islamist militant groups and conservative religious leaders suspicious of foreign plots to sterilise Muslims. Washington Post