Population planning does not seem to have been on the priority list of governments in Pakistan. It has been a victim of frequent policy shifts blamed on absence of political will, following a not so bad start. Pakistan was one of the first countries in the region to opt for a comprehensive family planning programme more than fifty years ago. Performance of the relevant ministry and departments has been highly inconsistent.

The passage of the 18^th Amendment brought about a drastic change in how population welfare had to be undertaken and policies implemented-- at the provincial level.

Meanwhile the questions remain the same: are we making the right policies and have the commitment to implement them at the grassroots level? Do we have a population welfare programme to remove policy and structural flaws down to the district and tehsil levels?

Not being able to take the issue head on in the past has resulted in several problems, one of them being how to deal with the youth bulge, their education and physical and emotional well-being. Educating children has been and remains a challenge for the government.

Also read: Population Scale of the challenge

Against this backdrop, social pressures on women and administrative loopholes in government departments come together to make family planning services a difficult undertaking. How to put the message across is still a big question. It should be obvious that people belonging to different economic, social, and religious backgrounds need to be approached differently to get the desired results.