The Sindh government’s advertisement campaign became the catalyst for our Special Report today. It uses a mufti’s face and message to convince the people that God too desires a natural way of spacing in birth and that is why it is ordained in scriptures that each mother should feed her child for two years. The policy-makers may have done exhaustive research to come to the conclusion that population explosion owes itself to religious reasons and the remedy therefore must be sought in and through religion.

The people may not be privy to any research that was conducted and it is too early to say whether this kind of an ad campaign is what this country was looking for all these years. But it is certainly not the first time that such ideas have been sold to the people in a bid to control the family size.

That a big majority of women in this country do not breast feed their babies in the first six months may have been another consideration of the policy-makers and the campaign may have been designed to achieve both objectives. At least that’s what one hopes was the case.

Apart from looking at the awareness campaigns and how vague they have generally been kept, citing the cultural sensitivities of people, we have tried to look at other major challenges faced by Pakistan in terms of controlling population and birth rates. Even if all other development indicators are ignored, how closely tied this is with high maternal and child mortality rates and malnutrition levels needs to be addressed at the policy-making level. On the individual level, Zeba Sathar, an expert in the field, hints at "simple efforts at expanding information sources and choices of service delivery".

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In our Report today, we have tried to get a sense of what is happening in all four provinces both in terms of awareness and access to facilities of birth control and maternal and child care. This is especially important in the wake of devolution, and yet we need a national programme and vision that must be replicated in all four provinces.

It turns out the government can’t do it all alone. It needs the private sector, in smaller projects, to help it realise its vision. But there is only as much the private sector can achieve. There is no better alternative than the Lady Health Workers programme and that needs to be the priority at the moment.

As for using clergy for social programmes, it needs to be kept in mind that they might lend support to one or two strategic issues but then go off to support something totally regressive and thus hurt the just cause.