Ballooning population

With a population exceeding 250 million, Pakistan is grappling with a myriad of challenges exacerbated by rapid population growth. Experts have long identified this unchecked expansion as a leading contributor to rising poverty, illiteracy, homelessness and malnutrition, but successive governments have failed to take all necessary measures to increase awareness and access to contraception. This practice of kicking the can down the road has created a situation where we are now facing the biggest brain drain in our history, and already-stressed social service providers will need to do more with less, as potential high taxpayers move abroad and more people in Pakistan require access to health and education.

A recent seminar in Karachi also highlighted how family planning is not only Islamically permissible, but essential, as having too many children can be detrimental to the welfare of all the children. Unfortunately, almost half of the mothers in the country have never utilised any form of family planning, whether due to pressure from relatives, lack of awareness, or other reasons. Family planning reforms take several years, even decades, to become truly visible, and if any new policies are to be effective, the government needs to start breaking taboos around the subject.

We must prioritise familial education around reproductive health and family planning, engage religious leaders to disseminate accurate information, and support legislation on family planning. The topic should also be integrated into the academic curriculum at the college and university level, if not earlier. Since almost 30% of Pakistani women are married by age 18, and the median marriage age is just around 21, most Pakistani women will have had their first child before the age of 23, which is among the lowest in the world.

Without access to contraception, women who marry so early are likelier to have bigger families, which would continue the trend of unsustainable population growth, forcing the downward spiral to continue.