Population control is one of the critical issues of our time. In underdeveloped countries like Pakistan, birth control is considered a sin against God by some narrow-minded, fanatics. The fact is that population explosion is not merely an economic problem; it is also a big social problem. Parents have too many children cannot pay attention to the mental, physical, and spiritual growth and betterment of each of their children. As a result, their children feel neglected.
They fall a victim to different evils. There are many causes of this deplorable situation such as poverty and the lack of means of entertainment. But the main cause of population explosion in our country is illiteracy. About 42 million adults are illiterate. They are under the powerful influence of the mullah who teaches them that birth control is against the faith. Islamic scholars around the world have stated categorically that there is no religion injunction against birth control.
Islam itself presents the solution to this problem. In the Holy Quran God says, "And mothers should suckle their children for two whole years...". this means that an intervening space of about three years should elapse between one pregnancy and other. Pakistan cannot be put on the path to progress unless we change our attitude, control our population and increase our food production.
Even after fifty years of freedom we are facing an acute shortage of food grains and other essential commodities. The efforts made during the past years to increase production appear to have proved useless. This is due to the increase in population. The food production was increased, but it was consumed by the increased population. We find ourselves even today in the grip of food problem. Food problem and population are inter-connected.
Our people do not get even two full meals a day. We find young children roaming on the roads even in severe winter with no cloths on their backs. Thousands of people pass their own. Further, there is widespread unemployment in the country. Unemployment is a headache for every one.
Family planning is necessary to improve the condition of the Pakistani masses. We cannot improve the condition of the masses without limiting the size of the family. To have a big family is a curse. The size of family directly affects the economic standard of the family. Small families have better standard of living. So the families must be planned. Let the people have children only by choice and not by chance.Many methods have been suggested for keeping the population under control. It is the age of science.
The problems due to overpopulation in Pakistan are what you see in everyday news and on the streets. Poverty, unemployment, terrorism, high crime rate, load shedding, lower human development index, food crises, electricity crises, water crises, and extremism. When resources are scarce and demand is high, people would do whatever they can to snatch on anything that they what they want to survive. Population grows exponentially, where as there is no way to make resources grow exponentially as well. So contrary to popular myth, over population is not a blessing. Pakistan's carrying capacity is much less than the population it has now.
And causes? Fundamentalist Islamic mindset is one of the biggest cause for overpopulation in Pakistan. Muslims are discouraged to exercise birth control. You will see Muslims even in the west have huge families. You will never in Pakistan hear a holy man giving family planning advice to a Muslim couple. Children are considered will of "Allah" and it is believed that Allah will provide for them. Lack of awareness and facilities about contraception and abortion makes matter worse. Virtually non existent women rights make most of the women just a commodity of pleasure for men. Cultural issues make things even more complex, if a couple don't have many kids means something is wrong with either the man or the woman, which in the case of man is huge blow to his ego, and for woman it is a social stigma. First thing Pakistani couples want to do within the first year of marriage is to quickly have a baby. Economic reasons also come into to play for the most poor, child labor is allowed, even preferred in Pakistan. So if parents have more kids means they can earn more.
Most people in Pakistan will deny all of the above if you ask them. They prefer to live in a state of denial putting the burden on God and afterlife.
Yes we have the problem, a serious one indeed. The way people are behaving towards the subject in Pakistan is both quite interesting and shocking. On the one hand we have a number of problems in our day to day life, and on the other hand, we never seem to give up the idea that women are but a child-production factory in our part of the world. Situation is even worse when one visits to the villages of Pakistan where the country's more than half of population resides in. Among other things, I presume it's an unjust to these women. Ours is also the country among the top ranks of countries where child and child-birth mortality rates are higher. Illiteracy, malnutrition, poverty, child labour and abuse, coupled with other social crimes are just a few problems among a barrage of others. Let's hope our elected leaders find time to pay their heeds over the issues afflicting the country invisibly. Stacks are really high. Last but not the least, I request newly wed couples visiting the site that please bachy do he achay! :D and those couples who have dozen of them that please lagy raho muna bhai! :P Fahim Memon
It has been rightly said that over population is one of the mother of all social problems, Population becomes a bane when a country is unable to provide it basic needs and necessaties of life, We are facing enormous social and psychological problems due to over population, There is need to pay full concentration to control run away population, so that we can make our human resource useful by providing proper education and technical skills, other wise, such a large population is a burden for our country because our Govt.is unable to provide health, eduaction and other amenities of life to 3 Million people every year and so they are increasing dependent ratio of population in our country which ultimately results in Poverty.
The population explosion there can only end by the death of millions due to disease or war. If they don't want to help themselves I don't think other countries should help.
I would like to argue that overpopulation leads to a bad environmental condition , bad economic resources, poverty, illiteracy, shortage of food, water and disintegration in our country.
In my opinion, population explosion is a blessing for Pakistan as it enhances the human resources of the country. Its our responsibility to educate our manpower so as to harness their potential. The only problem that pakistan face due to large population is that a large no of people are migrating from villages to cities to earn living to meet the needs of their family. The solution is that the govt. Should give facilities in the remote areas of the country and create job opportunities in these areas so that the population migration could be tackled and in this way the population in the country can be divided in a suitable ratio.
Why are there no dates on the comments of this discussion? Today is May 31, 2012.
Encourage large families worldwide, so that more people can come alive and experience life. Natural human population expansion is very wonderful, for human life should spread, so that parents can enjoy having children, and so that more can enjoy life, and so as to allow for the natural beauty of the human race freely blossoming in size.
Population maynot be a big issue for the developing countries if longterm plan has been implimented there is actually the problem of planning and its implementation in the country. This is the population which exploit the natural resources expands the market. And supply labor to the country. The developing countries as we know are not capital intensive thus more labour can be used for production in the economy. However the root issue of the population comes from the policies. The developing countries as we have seen had been the colonies of the developed countries specially UK. And since then we have their policies which we are implementing, rather we should make our own policies. The other factor is that we the developing countries are infuenced by the culture, and living style of the developed countries we are not capital intensive but we want to be in a short term peroid though its not possible but the developing countries still do. Though the fact is this technology is not being transfered to the developing countries. If the transfer so they transfer to their MNCs that is the multinational companies. Due to this some of the technology is given to the domestic industries. And they then layoff their workers and go for capital intensive technology. But this is not a good approach. As this will create unemployment problem. Things the developing countries need to do is to start building their own industries with labour intensive technologies and government need to spend more on public goods to absorb the increasing population. And to raise their income level. If income level is raised the people thus becomes councoius about their lifestyles. Although its not so easy to do it. But if clearcut policies been made and well strategies are made the objectives can be achieved efficiently. But again we lake the long term government in developing countries. When the past govt goes and the next comes that govt changes their perspective. This is one of the great reasons. What is wrote is a critical overview. In my view population is not a problem but a gift from god.
