Doomsday Scenario

OCTOBER 1999 - Every one who has had the opportunity to guide policy in Pakistan has had to face the great bugbear of all times; spiralling population. And just about everyone has been stumped by this problem, which apparently has no solution. Well actually there are solutions. There have always been solutions but there have not been enough men and women to make it happen and not enough national will power. There have always been too many conflicting viewpoints and the desire to play it safe. Our population growth has assumed frightening proportions. Sounds like a mouthful? It is.

There are just too many people in Pakistan. You can’t go anywhere, except the remotest deserts or perhaps the lands beyond the far mountains, without running into millions of people. They are everywhere. And they are multiplying. It is no exaggeration to claim that whatever else we may not be able to do, we are in a class of our own when it comes to producing children. It is quite easily the biggest industry we have and we are very good at it. If we, as a nation, are not deeply engrossed discussing marriages, we are even harder at work discussing children. Before a couple has been married an hour, concerned aunts are making enquiries if a child is on the way. Should a couple make the mistake of ‘planning’ a family - that is not having a child right away, danger signals start to fly and not very discreet probes are launched to check the merchandise. In almost all such probes, the line of questioning invariably leads to the women. The general rule in Pakistan is that if there is anything wrong, the women must be responsible for it. The men are infallible.

Consider the often-heard complaints made about women leading the men astray with provocative dresses, manners and morals. Those who never tire of preaching this all time favourite, have been unable to see why men are so weak when it comes to being misled. So when a couple decides to hold a while till they can start a family or restrict the number, alarm bells sound everywhere and a strong and relentless pressure is brought upon the concerned couple, with emotional blackmail thrown in for good measure. It works and couples rather than face the combined pressure of dozens of ‘concerned’ parents, relatives and well wishers (a shady lot that one), succumb and announce more good news.

If it’s a girl, there are more complications. Clucking with sympathy, new pressure is applied and it is not removed till the male has made an impressive arrival. No amount of hype that we are in fact far more inclined to favour girls over boys, can overcome our ‘preference’ for the male line. Everything else is lip service and done more for effect than commitment. In this matter, the gap in behaviour between those who are ‘educated’ – another misnomer that one, and those who are not, is insignificant when it comes to questions of procreation and gender. And because, by and large, families believe that children are God sent and come with their personal kismet already marked out, the more the merrier. Poorer sections of the country – that means more or less all of us except that miniscule lot who live in another world, see children as sources of income and therefore your driver, your cook or the office peon will have six to eight children, all between the ages of 1 month and 10 years. It is a horror scenario and it grows.

The population ministry has struggled for years to bridge the gap between ignorance and rationality, but so strong are the overtones of religion that it has had to walk a thin line so as not to be accused of creating mischief. While experts concede that some progress has been made, that our growth rate is below 3 percent per annum, it still means a frightening amount of new additions to our already huge population. It is said that the religious leaders and clerics are solidly behind population planning, but not everyone is convinced this is true. If they are so committed, why have we never heard them propagating this loud and clear? They have been known to split the thinnest of hairs infinitely and there is usually a grand clearance sale on fatwas, but they have hardly ever initiated a national movement to fight age-old beliefs. Their role has been murky. And since there are far too many custodians of morality here, communication messages, instead of being hard and blunt have had to be so tailored so as to cause no offence.

Recently, the PM set a ‘good’ example when he banned a commercial because it was reportedly offensive, without even checking this. It took months to get it back on line. This merely strengthens those who are opposed to population control. It is not hard to understand that if you call a spade a camel, the core message will be lost somewhere. That is what has happened and continues to happen. Words like condoms are banned. A largely illiterate public is aware but simply not driven to practice planning. The country’s educated class has done nothing either. Each one of us comes into contact daily with people who are uneducated and produce large families, yet barring a few, we simply do not instruct and advise them. Informal communication can do wonders, but we are too caught up with our personal agendas to pay any attention to this national calamity.

There are some sobering figures staring us in the face. All the motorways, the Mera Ghars and the hundred other schemes that we launch cannot save us if we don’t stop our population from proliferating at this speed. Every single thing we call development is being rendered futile because the equation is killing us. If we have to survive – and this is a time bomb which is already exploding – crime, unemployment, slums, disease – the entire country has to fight this battle, led by the President and the Prime Minister and all the way down. It is a mountain that’s coming down on us and will wipe us out. That’s the writing on the wall before the wall goes as well.