Population planning

DR JOHN Bongaarts, Vice-President, Policy Research Division of the UN Population Council, has predicted in a presentation at the Planning Commission that Pakistan’s population by 2050 will be around 300 million, with the average fertility rate of four births per woman, says a Recorder Report. (At present the country’s population is 160.25 million.) He said the fertility rate has in fact declined from 5.6 births per woman in 1992-94 to 4.1 births at present, which he ascribed 30 percent to the use of contraceptives. He said that in fact only half of the actual demand for contraceptives is being really met in the country, while aside from the monetary cost of contraceptives there are also social and psychological factors discouraging the use of contraceptives. Fertility remains the key driving force behind population growth in the country. For instance, if a family desires to have four children it will have the same number of children, regardless of whether they use contraceptives. A positive feature of this demographic trend is that Pakistan has seen a fivefold increase in the number of young people, especially in the age group of 15-24 who have entered the labour force looking for jobs. Obviously, Pakistan can derive great benefit from the growth of this productive age group if it is imparted proper education and training even if the country’s population doubles by the year 2050. Dr Bongaarts has proposed that Pakistan should strengthen its reproductive health delivery systems, invest in human resources, address the needs of adolescents, ensure delayed childbearing, and increase its socio-economic and environmental investment, especially to accelerate the progress of women. Dr Ejaz Rahim, a former cabinet secretary, said on the occasion that Pakistan should integrate its health, education and population planning programmes with the social issues, which would allow it to fashion a cogent strategy in the overall perspective of population growth.Dr John Bongaarts’ prediction is indeed extremely disquieting, in view of the fact that the strain on the country’s health delivery system, educational facilities, civic services, employment, etc is already at a breaking point. In addition, apart from the neglect of the social sector a high population growth rate acts as a restraint on growth in per capita GDP.
With its collective population of nearly 1.5 billion, the South Asian region is reckoned to be one of the poorest in the world. Pakistan, with its current population of over 160 million, is the fifth most populous country in the world. Its high population growth rate is surprising, given the fact that it was among the few countries to initiate a national-level family and population planning programme way back in the 1950s. Many population programmes launched in this region have had only a limited impact on population growth, and Pakistan’s performance in this sector has been very poor compared to that of other countries. For the most part, the demographic targets in the country have seldom been met, largely because of the paucity of political will or commitment. Inadequate funding and weak management to oversee and implement the programmes are the other factors that have contributed to the failure of these programmes. Yet another cause has been that the focus of population planning in the past largely remained on the supply of contraceptives, regardless of the demand for these products or awareness about their usefulness. As a result, the impact on fertility rate was low, and the population growth rate remained high. Incidentally, the annual population growth rate was 1.8 percent in 1947. This increased to 3.1 percent in 1981, which was among the highest rates in the world. And now Dr John Bongaarts has predicted that Pakistan’s population by the year 2050 will be around 300 million. Major contributory factors in the upward demographic trend have been the expansion of preventive medicine, public health delivery services and increased provision of safe drinking water and sanitation facilities, which have led to a substantial decline in the mortality rate. However, a large population would not be a calamity, if the country’s economic managers focus their attention on human resource development, of which China is an illustrious example.

 

The bottom billion

THERE cannot be much disagreement with Robert Zoellick’s new vision for the World Bank. Marking 100 days as its new chief, he feels the institution needs to effect a qualitative shift from predominantly financing mega projects to acting as a “catalyst for market dynamism”, making the globalisation process more “inclusive and sustainable”. His proposed strategy that multilateralism should work more effectively “not just in conference halls and communiqués, but in villages and teeming cities” is again, theoretically correct, meaning the Bank has more or less got its agenda right and the months and years to follow will test the correctness, or lack, of the chosen modus operandi. Interestingly, Zoellick has admitted the global income distorting fall out of International Financial Institutions’ (IFIs) working, something he missed while defending similarly skewed policies of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) when heading the American misssion. And as right as he is in placing blame for the ‘bottom billion’ population’s inability to reap globalisation benefits on conflict, discrimination, infrastructure, etc, he needs to take a still clearer note of how multilateral organisations have so far only served to further the disparity.
No doubt globalisation is as potentially viable as it is inevitable, and the proverbial shrinking of the world into a global village provides unprecedented opportunities for balancing international income and trade inequalities. But it is in the deliberate nature of the globalisation cycle as it has been engineered so far that the fault lies. Funded overwhelmingly by giant Western economies, IFIs have, perhaps naturally, served to strengthen the economic North. But that it has been done largely at the cost of the South is unacceptable, which is why the proposed shift in direction is welcome. As pointed out recently by the prominent Washington based Centre for Global Development, rich nations can do a far better job of helping their lesser fortunate counterparts. Considering modern progress and riches, mankind is in a unique position of declaring a very winnable battle on global poverty, hunger, exploitation, and the like. But it is a raging pity that much stiffer attention is focused on initiatives that serve more to hurt mankind as a whole than help it. Economics can earn vindication as a social science if its practitioners can sway international opinion beyond the mundane demand-supply matrix and provide a model that can bring about an overwhelming permanent positive change. Decision makers would then be blamed should such an opportunity go begging.

—Khaleej Times