n his famous book An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798), Thomas Malthus argued that population increases geometrically, whereas food supply and resources increase only arithmetically. The Malthusian theory suggests that the human population increases more rapidly than the food required until famines, wars and epidemics bring this increase in check.

An old Persian story can help us understand the dynamics of population growth. So it goes that a clever courtier gifted a rare ivory-made chess set to a king. In return he asked for only one grain of rice for the first square, two for the second, four for the third, and so on. The king did not understand the law of exponential growth. He ordered the rice to be brought from the storage. The result was that the 10th square had 512 grains, the 14th weighed 1 kg and the 20th around 128 kg. The kingdom’s entire stock was exhausted. Malthus said the population increases in the same manner.

Pakistan is beset with two problems of existential proportions: the increase in population size and climate change.

The environmental crisis may have some aspects that are out of Pakistani society and the state’s control, but population growth is what they can take responsibility for and is controllable indeed.

In 1947, Pakistan had 27 million people. The 2023 census registered 241.5 million, with an average yearly increase of 2.55 per cent since 2017.

According to a report by the National Geographic magazine, “more than half the population increase that’s projected for the next quarter century is expected to come from just eight countries in Asia and Africa.” Pakistan is placed foremost in this list of these countries.

With such a high population growth rate, the demand for living space is increasing. As a result, urban expansion is taking place at an unprecedented pace, turning vast swathes of arable land into housing societies.

This catastrophic trend is evident from visiting any small, medium or large city in the country where investors and land mafias are fast taking over fertile lands and selling those as housing plots.

The population explosion is impacting every aspect of the state and society, including the economy and food security.

The population explosion is impacting every aspect of the state and society, including the economy and food security.

The availability of agricultural land has decreased from 2.5 hectares to 0.2 hectares per capita of rural population; water availability fell by 49 per cent between 1990 and 2000 and is moving further downwards. There are 0.6 hospital beds per thousand people as opposed to 12.6 beds per thousand in Japan (the highest ratio in the world). The rate of unemployment has risen from 1.7 per cent in 1961 to an estimated 8.0 per cent in 2024. The Quality of Life Human Development Index of UNDP ranks Pakistan at 154 out of 189 countries.

The birth rate in Pakistan exceeds those in other South Asian countries such as India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

The average growth rate of the population was recorded in the 1998 census as 2.61 per cent per annum for the period starting from the 1981 census. It was documented at 2.4 per cent during 1998-2017 and 2.54 per cent in the period 2017-2023. Keeping in view the internationally accepted figure of 2.1 as the replacement ratio, Pakistan ranks in the explosive category of population increase. Only 34 per cent of the married population use contraceptives, including modern and traditional methods, as compared to 70 per cent in the US and Canada. This points to the dismal situation in the country and the ignorance of people with regard to contraceptive use but also reflects the disempowerment of women in deciding the number of children.

According to UN estimates, the current 3.4 births per woman will decline to 2.3 by 2050. Pakistan’s population will have reached 340 million by then. Pakistan is a resource-scarce country. Around 40 per cent of its population currently lives under the poverty line, according to estimates from the World Bank. Around 98 million people are facing food insecurity and acute water shortage. Further limitations on resources are being imposed increasingly by climate change, in which, once again, the country stands among the most vulnerable.

Early marriages, lack of education and low literacy rate, lack of reproductive orientation and absence of sex education in the curricula of even higher educational institutions are a few important causes of this rapid rise in population.

It is important to note that no amount of planning can work given the onslaught of such a huge population and its spiralling rise.

To make sense of rational future planning, the dynamics of population planning need to be drastically changed and envisioned anew.

The writer heads the History Department at University of Sargodha. He has worked as a research fellow at Royal Holloway College, University of London. He can be reached at abrar.zahoor@hotmail.com His X handle: @AbrarZahoor1