With the birth of a son last month, 50-year-old Pakistani Rao Abdul Rashid and his wife are now content that their family is complete. It was not so with three daughters, they say.

Although Rashid and his wife both hold post-graduate degrees and by any standard are considered empowered citizens, they continue to harbour socially and culturally prevalent bias for a son and a large family.

Their mentality reflects how the attitudes of most Pakistanis have not changed, despite decades of awareness campaigns run by the government and more recently by NGOs about the need for family planning and smaller families.

Having more children is considered to be social and economic security in a country where governments have been letting people down in all social sectors since its inception 54 years ago, according to demographer and social scientist Dr Jennifer Bennett.

"If the state could ensure security of basic needs to the people, there is a chance that people opt for smaller families," she explained.

The average family size in Pakistan still remains 6.6, and less than 30 percent of couples use family planning methods.

'US conspiracy'

Another factor that restricts the use of contraceptives is the opposition from the clergy, which holds a considerable sway over people and terms family planning as un-Islamic.

"Population control programmes are a conspiracy of the United States to prevent Muslim countries from becoming a global power by slashing their birth rates,'' said a spokesperson for Hizbut Tehrir, a right-wing Islamic group.

''Americans do not tolerate high birth rates in Muslim countries because more young people mean bigger Muslim armies and work forces,'' he added.

Pakistan's population trends are a factor in widespread poverty, which in turn affects economic and political stability because the government is unable to meet its people's needs.

In fact, Pakistani policymakers look at an unbridled increase in population as a major cause of other ills — unemployment, housing shortage, illiteracy, environmental degradation, strain on civic services.

Although successive governments have supposedly put priority on population planning, the population growth rate still stands at 2.2 percent, one of the highest in the region.

Independent studies, particularly by some donor agencies, put the growth rate as high as 2.6 percent.

But even at the officially recognised rate, 4.3 million people are added to the 140 million population annually in a country that is seventh most populous in the world.

With an average of 1.2 million deaths annually, the net addition to the population comes to around 3.1 million every year.

"At this rate we will double to become a nation of 285 million by the year 2034, just 33 years later. These figures are disturbing especially if the nation's capital resources and prospects of their growth are compared realistically rather than in the haze of political expediency," said MS Jillani, a retired bureaucrat who heads the Pakistan Population Association as honorary president.

Ambitious objectives

The government seems to have realised the gravity of the issue only now, by its first Population Policy 2002. The Ministry of Population Welfare earlier dealt with the issue in isolation, without its critical linkages with other social sectors.

The new policy, unveiled by President Gen Pervez Musharraf on the World Population Day on July 11, aims to have universal access to family planning this year, and to bring down the population growth rate to 1.3 percent by 2003 and 1.9 percent by 2004.

However, critics call these ambitious objectives given the government's dismal performance in the past, as well as factors like an inefficient public health delivery system, rampant illiteracy and people's desire for large families with more sons.

"Hopefully, the government's new population policy will prove dynamic enough to help it achieve the goals which anyway seem too ambitious to be easily achieved," said an editorial the English-language daily The Nation this month, echoing the views of other newspapers.

Up until now, the government has just been hoping to stabilise population through programmes of the public health delivery system or special outlets in partnership with the private sector.

But that did not seem to work, as less than 50 percent people have access to primary healthcare provided by the public sector. The private sector has always been more inclined to invest in urban areas.

Lately, the government has been expanding family planning intervention in rural areas as well and has enlisted more than 45,000 women health workers for this.

But despite all this work, Pakistan's population growth rate only fell by 0.9 percent in last two decades — from 3.1 percent in 1981 to the current 2.2 percent.

Integrated approach

The Musharraf government says that the new policy will change the situation because it will address the population issue in its entirety.

"The new policy is not just about bringing down population growth rate, but about attaining a balance between resources and population and increasing adverse awareness of adverse consequences of rapid growth," said Dr Zeba Sathar, one of the authors of the policy and a demographer.

For the first time, she says, the policy takes into account the links of population growth with issues like illiteracy and women's disempowerment.

"The government realises that population growth can only be tackled through an integrated approach with special emphasis on education, female literacy, reproductive rights and women empowerment," she said.

As the first step to local communities involved in these efforts, Islamabad has shifted control of its family planning programme to provinces. It will eventually be administered at the newly formed district government level.

But in the end, says columnist on social issues Tracy Thomson Khan, the success of population stabilisation efforts depends on the state's ability to change cultural values and norms that make having more children a better option than fewer children.

"Women will continue to have many children as long as infant mortality rates remain high, as long as their in-laws reward their high fertility, as long as boys are valued more highly than girls, as long as men think of additional child as medal of manhood, and as long as high population is equated with strength," she said. — IPS