It was undoubtedly a very brave decision on the part of Sindh's legislature to openly discuss the topic of population planning in the country and adopt a proper resolution on the subject unanimously. The resolution was moved by MQM-Pakistan's Rana Ansar and approved by the Assembly which said that "this Assembly resolves that (the) provincial government (should) take measures to plan population and launch awareness campaigns in this regard". The mover had originally scripted the resolution with the words "to control" the population but after an extensive debate, these words were replaced with "to plan". Ansar appreciated the Sindh Chief Minister, saying that Sindh was the first province to set up a task force "to plan" the alarmingly increasing population and Sindh's strategy should be followed by a joint initiative by all the provinces if we are to handle the population challenge. She also stressed the point that Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was the first leader who had launched the programme to seriously tackle the population issue but later on no targets could be achieved. Joining the debate, Dr. Azra, Sindh's Population Welfare and Health Minister said that her ministry was working on it diligently to ensure planned and responsible parenthood but we had limited resources. Women were the ultimate sufferers of the entire scenario and deemed to be a child-producing factories at the expense of their health and lives. There was a horrible mothers' mortality ratio, which was 178 out of 1000. Lady Health Workers' (LHWs) programme was launched to provide 45 percent health coverage but the coverage dwindled due to a decrease in the original strength of LHWs because of no regular recruitment. The recruitments are now made to expand the coverage and LHWs have also been trained to administer the first injection to mothers. MQM-P's Muhammad Hussain has argued that political will is needed to achieve the target of controlled population growth. PPP's Kulsoom Chandio and PTI's Shehzad Qureshi have said that the authorities should take further measures and they have to work harder particularly in the rural areas. GDA's Nusrat Abbasi has printed out that women are forced to go for surgeries to stop pregnancies and why such operations are not performed on men.
While PPP, PTI, MQM and GDA have a unanimous view on the subject, the MMA and TLP have opposed the resolution. It was probably due to their statements that the words "to control" were replaced with "to plan" in the resolution, although both the members were absent in the house when the Speaker placed the resolution for a vote in the assembly.
We are of course delighted to note that a huge majority of the Sindh Assembly is aware of the consequences of the ticking bomb of population and prepared to defuse this bomb with all the available means despite resistance from the religious parties who are in a very small minority in the legislature. We can only hope that other provinces would also follow the lead and add to the voice of Sindh Assembly to tackle one of the most urgent problems of the country. The unanimous view of all the assemblies including the national parliament would of course add to the pressure on the religious parties to ease their stance and let the government pursue the matter of population control openly, vigorously and without any ambiguity. After all, when most of the other Muslim countries could encourage the practice of family planning and birth control and bring down the population growth to manageable levels, Pakistan can't afford to see the country sinking under the burden of a high population growth rate of 2.4 percent. At the present growth rate of between 3-4 percent and the annual increase of 2.4 percent in population, the majority of population cannot visualise even a modest improvement in their standards of living even in the decades to come. It may be argued that Pakistan had to face a high cost of inaction in the past by not keeping a check on population growth. Pakistan has the slowest demographic transition in the region as the use of contraceptives had dropped to 33 percent compared to 77 percent in Iran, 68 percent in Sri Lanka and 62 percent in Bangladesh. The continuation of this trend and further apathy on the matter could be ruinous in many ways and tear apart the socio-economic fabric of society. Kudos to the Sindh Assembly for declaring its utmost support to family planning which is almost a matter of life and death for the country. The Prime Minister and the Chief Justice of Pakistan had also spoken in favour of family planning a few weeks ago. This seems to be the right time for all the provinces to come on the same page in order to check the population growth and throw this ticking bomb as far away as possible.