Unplanned future

The past few years were spent in electioneering and in the wrangling between various political parties. While the lower segment of society faced a miserable time due to inflation and unemployment, the selected top layers, including the state bureaucracy and judiciary, remained least affected. Financial mismanagement in the past years, especially during the tenure of the PTI government, pushed the country into the abyss of heavy debt. But these are relatively small issues compared with what the future holds for us.

The Asian Development Bank in its 'Pakistan National Urban Assessment' report has termed the main cities of the country, including Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar, Quetta and Islamabad, ‘unlivable’. For this, ADB Country Director Emma Xiaoqin Fan blames Pakistan’s rapid urban population growth as a result of the exodus of people from villages and smaller towns to main cities in search of jobs. As a result, population pressure on civic amenities in the cities is increasing massively for the municipal organisations to keep up with. Director Fan anticipates: “The pressure on cities mired in ever-increasing deficits of urban infrastructure and services will only intensify, with an urban population projected to climb to 99 million, or 40 per cent of the country’s total, in 2030,”

The exploding population is not the only scourge plaguing the country; carelessness and lack of importance by the government towards education at lower levels are most threatening for the future. It has been reported many times that about 26 million children don’t attend school. What their future would be like is not hard to imagine.

Pakistan is the fifth most populous country in the world. Combined with its high rate of illiteracy, this forms the most lethal combination for the future of the nation. Unfortunately, politicians and bureaucrats don’t even seem to consider what state the nation will be in a decade-plus from now. Their interests are immediate and they don’t think years ahead of time in the national interests. Read the daily newspapers and you rarely find any mention or discussion about the two most important topics – population planning and education at a lower level. The situation couldn’t have been any worse.

We need to take drastic measures at the national level. The first is to discourage rural-urban migration by establishing industrial centres in undeveloped far-flung areas, like some districts in southern Punjab including Dera Ghazi Khan, Muzaffarharh, Rajanpur and Leigha. In DGK and Muzafargrah, vast stretches of land lie barren and unused. The investors could be encouraged to establish industries there and, in return, they could be exempted from paying taxes and duties during the initial years. The industrialists who set up industries there would get cheap labour, thus helping reduce unemployment in the rural areas. It would also help reduce the movement of unemployed from the rural to the overcrowded urban areas.

The second extremely important decision for the government to take is to control the expansion of the population. Being the fifth most populated country in the world is no matter of pride. If Bangladesh could manage to control its burgeoning population, why can’t we? Multiplying population coupled with illiteracy form the most dangerous combination for the country. According to a survey carried out by NGO Guttmacher Institute, Pakistan has 3.5 million unplanned pregnancies every year. The NGO estimates a scary figure of 300 million Pakistanis by the year 2050.

The basic interest of every government is to remain in power. Thinking and planning about the future of the nation is not talked about much. There existed a family planning department whose women staff regularly visited houses mostly in the villages to educate about family planning and its benefits. One doesn’t hear about it anymore. The government needs to look into this strictly given the future of the nation and make it mandatory for Pemra to regularly display advertisements about the benefits of birth control.

The writer is a freelance columnist based in Lahore. He can be reached at: pinecity@gmail.com