In 1961, the population of East Pakistan, which is now Bangladesh, was 48 million; however, its current population is around 170 million. It increased by 252 percent in 61 years. So comparatively, Bangladesh is far better at population control than Pakistan. Consequently, population control has helped Bangladesh economically, politically and socially.
Population related issues include a poor education system, a lack of skilled labour, a poor health system, child labour issues and more. Furthermore, the growth in beggars and terrorism are subsequent causes of a lack of population control. If a government tried to resolve the subsequent problems without addressing the issue of population, it will not be successful.
If one discusses the above issues individually in relation to the lack of population control, a poor education system will lead the index. Although Pakistan is the second-largest state in the world, with 22.8 million children out of school, those children who are getting their education from main stream public schools are not as good as one could hope for.
For most of the government school teachers, there is very little development or a rewarding career path which means these teachers have little to no interest in their jobs. On the flip side, the government can't afford to appoint quality educated people to deliver quality education to all the students. Therefore, most of the higher education students even those with Master's degrees in a particular subject do not know even the basics of their subject.
The second issue in Pakistan in the index will be the lack of skilled labour because of the high growth of the population. A particular skill needs time to develop, but a family with a high population growth rate does not allow its members to learn skills because of a lack of free time. Most of the members of that family would prefer daily wages to support the family. However, the soar in inflation might strongly impact their balance and ultimately fall their family into the trap of poverty.
Health is also one of the biggest issues in Pakistan. In the same way, a lack of population control is fully responsible for this. According to the International Diabetes Federation,in 2022, 26.7% of the adults in Pakistan will be affected by diabetes.
Similarly, according to the Agha Khan University report, Pakistan has the largest patient population hapetitis C, with almost 8 million people affected by it. These are the worst chronic diseases in the world, so this shows the extreme poor health condition of Pakistan. If the population were in control, firstly, there would not be such a high number of chronic disease patients, and secondly, the government could manage to give them free treatment.
The other biggest issue in Pakistan is terrorism, which has heavily affected Pakistan economically, socially and politically. It is a menace that is indirectly linked with a lack of population control. For instance, if a person is extremely poor and cannot bear the expenses of his wife and children with his normal earnings, he has two options: one is to beg, and the other is to commit crimes to earn money in easy but violent ways.
Such routes of earning might lead him to terrorism, since it is well known that begging and crimes are the reliable sources of the terrorism industry. That's why it is written in many airports in Japan that begging is a major threat to state security.
Recently, I came across terrible things that happened in my locality because of a lack of population control. A girl had been married a boy who was mentally unfit. However, after their marriage, she gave birth to six children. Along with mental illness, her husband was cocaine addicted and was not able to earn enough to feed his children. His wife and his six children came to his father's house, but her father was also not as wealthy to support his daughter's family along with his family.
One day, one of her brothers became frustrated and kicked out his sister and her children from his father's house. When a kind neighbour learned about that, he invited her to his own house and gave her a separate room for free. He also told her that he would support her as long as she lived there.
When her relatives knew the whole story, they brought her to her father's house and forced her husband to divorce her. After the divorce, the children were sent to their father's house.
After a few days, I found that those children are doing labour work instead of going to school. So there are two questions that can be raised in one's mind. One is, why did she marry a mentally ill person? The second question is, why did her brother kick her out of her father's house? Both questions have the same answer, which is a lack of population control.
Apart from division within familiy, the lack of proper nourishment and guardianship of children would lead them to become future beggars and criminals, and as I wrote above, these are the easy sources of terrorism.
Ultimately, the way forward for all the above problems, directly or indirectly, is population control.