



FOR folks inclined to fret that that the earth is heading for an environmental abyss the population problem has always been one of the biggest causes for worry. In the slums of Dhaka city, tens of thousands of people shelter in huts made of cardboard with polythene roofs. There is no running water and no sanitation. The stench is overpowering: garbage and human waste heap up in piles. With 13 million residents -- up from 320,000 only 30 years ago -- Dhaka is considered the most populous urban centre on earth.

Ultimately, no problem may be more threatening to the environment than the proliferation of the human species. Today, the planet holds more than 6 billion people. During the current century, world population will double, with 90% of that occurring in poorer countries like Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, the Philippines and most African countries.

In the poorest countries, growth rates are outstripping the national ability to provide the bare necessities. Trees are being chopped down for fuel and croplands over-plowed by desperate farmers. Climatic disruption in recent time, followed by salinity intrusion, shrinking farmlands and crop losses and hunger on a scale never known before are now a reality.

The prospect is horrifying, and this is what Lester Brown, president of the World Watch Institute predicts for 2050, when the earth's population will have more than doubled from the present 6 billion and the capacity of science to devise methods for coaxing more food out of the soil will, in his view, be greatly diminished.

The population of Bangladesh in 1971 was 75 million, and in less than 40 years it has crossed 140 million. The Draft Population Policy, 2009 advocates introduction of single-child families [AK1] by 2015, which is not only an ambitious target but also a daunting challenge. There is no denying the fact that any government trying to achieve the Millennium Development Goals or socio-economic goals must contain the population boom.

With about 1,000 people living in one sq km in the countryside and the present birth rate of 1.4, resulting in an increase of 2.7 per family, there would be about 30 lakh new mouths to be fed every year. Consequently the agricultural land in the country continues to decrease by one percent every year, reducing the present cultivable land to 60 lakh hectare from 90 lakh hectare in 1980.

With population increasing even at this rate, we will become more populous and impoverished than many larger Asian countries. The horrifying poverty, with images of starvation, has captured the attention of the people. The burgeoning population will create huge pressure on every sector.

If there is a key to population control in developing countries, experts agree, it lies in improving the social status of women. Women in this region have little political or legal rights, and not many receive schooling that prepares them for roles outside the home. So said Robert Berg, president of the International Development Conference: "Expanding educational and employment opportunities for women is necessary for permanently addressing population issue."

Prospects are so dire that some environmentalists urge the world to cut the earth's population growth rate by half during the next decade. "That means a call for two-child family for the world as a whole," explained Lester Brown. That may be a daunting challenge. In the past, many poor nations, including Bangladesh, condemned the notion of family planning as an imperialist and racist scheme. But in reality, today all Third World countries are committed to limiting their populations.

The government must speed up the effort in limiting population. Contraceptive information and devices should be available to anyone who wants them. According to surveys made by the United Nations and other organisations, most couples belonging to the middle-income group in developing countries do not want more than two children because of the gruelling experiences they have in supporting large families with limited income. Yet, many have little or no access to effective methods of birth control. The increase in funds for family planning devices could shave projected world population from 10 billion to 8 billion over the next 60 years.

Bruce Wilcox, president of the Institute for Sustainable Development, an environmental research organisation in the U.S., declared in 1989 that solutions to the population challenge would demand "fundamental changes in society." Ingrained cultural attitudes that promote high birth rates will have to be challenged. Many families in poor agrarian societies like Bangladesh, India and Pakistan see children as a source of labour and a hedge against poverty in old age. People need to be taught that with lower infant mortality, fewer offspring can provide the same measure of security

Of all entrenched values, religion presents perhaps the greatest obstacle to population control. Roman Catholics have fought against national family planning efforts in Mexico, Kenya and the Philippines, while radical Muslim groups have done the same in Iran, Egypt, Pakistan and in parts of Bangladesh. Still, religious objections need not entirely thwart population planning. Where such resistance is encountered, vigorous campaigns should be mounted to promote natural birth-control techniques, including the rhythm method and fertility delay through breast-feeding.

The first great brake on population growth came in the early 1960s, with the development of birth control pill, a magic pharmacological bullet that made contraception easier than it had been before. In 1969, the United Nations got in on the population game, creating the U.N population Fund that brought family planning techniques to women who would not otherwise have them. The most significant step came in the 1994 Cairo conference, where attendees pledged $ 5.7 billion to reduce birth rates in the developing world and acknowledged that giving women more education and reproductive freedom was the key to accomplishing the goal. True, even global calamity like AIDS has yielded unprecedented dividends, with international campaigns to promote condom use and abstinence helping to prevent not only disease transmission but also conception.

It was learnt from reports published in The Daily Star on December 12 last that the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has taken an initiative to formulate a policy focusing on one child per family instead of current average of 2.7. But it appears that the measures run counter to achieving the goal. Many countries in the deepest demographic trouble imposed aggressive family planning programmes, only to see them go badly awry. In the 1970s Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi tried to reduce the national birthrate by offering men cash incentives if they underwent vasectomies. In the communities in which these sweeteners failed the government resorted to coercion, putting millions of males from on the operating table. Amid the popular backlash that followed, Gandhi's government was turned out of office, and the public rejected family planning.

Even though family planning had a bad reputation after the abandonment of the Indian government's programme in the 1970s, states like Tamil Nadu still set birthrate targets and instructed health workers to urge women of reproductive age to be sterilised. In fact, nurses earned bonuses based on how many sterilisation they encouraged. But this more subtle technique never really worked. Patients balked, and the bonuses led more often to falsification of records than to lower birthrates.

In 1992, Tamil Nadu finally dropped its "by-the-numbers" policy, setting an example that was later adopted by India as a whole. The change paralleled the consensus reached at the U.N's 1994 population conference in Cairo, which rejected target-based birth control in favour of giving women better health care and more family-planning choices.

Perhaps India has now a more humane and effective population policy, and much of the credit goes to people like Nirmala (32) who headed the village Health Nurse Association in Tamil Nadu. The committed nurse visited 5,000 or more people, treating all sorts of illnesses and offering contraceptive tips, she left smiles on the faces of women she visited.

Long before the Cairo conference, Nirmala complained about the birth control "numbers game," but superiors told her she would be "suspended" if she challenged policy. Only in 1992 did she get a real hearing when S.Ramasundaram took over Tamil Nadu's family welfare program.

When Ramasundaran followed the nurse's advice, results were dramatic. The state's population growth rate dropped from 1.5% in 1991 to 1% in 2000, compared with 1.8% for India as a whole.

According to the draft policy, yet to be made public, couples who had only one child would be provided with due preference in all state facilities, including government assistance. Sensible citizens believe that such incentives to chosen people would create schisms that would rather push the government into another crisis situation.

We don't need to offer incentives or even resort to draconian measures for achieving family planning targets. Simply remove the shackles and let people do what they were supposed to do. The fact is: men particularly concern themselves with birth control. But as Nirmala says: "Family planning is a social responsibility." You can't call it family planning, she feels, until the whole family is involved.

Md. Asadullah Khan is a former teacher of physics and Controller of Examinations, BUET.

e-mail : aukhanbd@gmail.com