Born by accident (II)

KARACHI: I am glad to know that this article has generated so much interest. Our cities and villages have a bulging population of young kids on the streets out of school and their homes. Their parents have no clue as to what these kids are up to. We all know how these children are abused and exploited. Did their parents really dream of sending them to university? If they did, why did their dream go horribly wrong? So the question is, was their birth an accident or did the parents plan it like this? Have we forgotten the 100 children who were dissolved in acid in Lahore ?

The fact is that we are sitting on a population bomb. We need to diffuse it. The question to ponder is the rights of the child before we give birth to one.

I recently saw Imran Aslam and he aptly described the population explosion as a “birth-quake”. Think of the majority of women of this country, who are illiterate, undernourished, anaemic, perpetually pregnant or lactating, overworked at home and outside on the fields, unpaid and then have the “duty “to perform at the end of the day. Yes, sex should be a pleasure but in Pakistan only a few have this luxury. This discussion about hormones and desires is totally drifting from the core issue.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 26^th, 2010.