Pakistan’s ‘exploding population bomb’
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% since then, reaching 207.7 million and making Pakistan the world’s fifth most populous country, surpassing Brazil and ranking behind China, India, the US 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% of the population under the age of 30, nearly a third of Pakistanis living in poverty and only 58% literate, he added “this is a disaster in the making”.
The chief causes of the continuing surge, according to population experts, include religious taboos, political timidity and public ignorance, especially in rural areas. Only a third of married Pakistani women use any form of birth control.
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 under-counted, 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 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.”
In a tiny bench-lined room in Dhoke Hassu, a congested working-class area of Rawalpindi, Rubina Rehman, a family welfare worker, listens all day to women’s problems. Once they feel comfortable with her, she broaches the topic of contraception.