The finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb has made a statement that the population of the country is becoming a burden on the resources and it has to be controlled.
Although he is an economist but he knows as much about social reforms as any common sense citizen. So from his statement it seems that he is also keeping an eye on climate change and its damage.
We have known for a long time that our population is more than our resources but we have not taken the necessary measures to control it, nor have we increased the literacy rate of women which is the main reason for this, eighty percent of the country’s woman population does not know that having more children can be a threat to their lives and families.
There are many excellent papers on this topic which need not be discussed much as it may take many more decades for our country to implement it. What should be discussed is how we can use our existing population as a trained resource as countries like China, India and Bangladesh have done.
Our finance minister says that Pakistan has to control the population to avoid the effects of climate change because the population in Pakistan has increased a lot. Said that climate financing will be discussed with IMF and World Bank during the annual meeting in October, Executive Board will also discuss climate financing after the IMF program is approved. The staff level agreement will be approved by the IMF Executive Board by the end of this month. Muhammad Aurangzeb said that Pakistan is included in the list of countries affected by climate change.
The Finance Minister said that to improve the economic situation, budget, tax measures, energy sector and quality of life should be improved. Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Climate Change, IMF and World Bank are working together. In collaboration with the IMF and the World Bank, monitoring of climate change projects will be improved, policies based on climate change will have to be made to avoid the effects of climate change.
He further said that the private sector has to play its role to improve the country’s economy. No one disagrees with what the Finance Minister is doing, but the tragedy is that even after so much has happened, he is still hanging around the IMF. He has not yet given any program that can be implemented to get the country out of the economic crisis.
In his statement he tried to give the impression that flood damage occurs in our country because our population is high, but he should also think about how India with a population of more than 1 billion and China with almost the same population have managed their population used and supported their economies by creating policies based on micro-financing and through continued population control made it possible for them to take their own decision in the matter of proper break in the birth of children.
The best example of population control is Bangladesh, whose population was once 8% more than Pakistan’s but as soon as they gained independence their population became equal to ours in a period of only six to seven years. From the decade until now, their population is about 60 million less than ours, which is due to its late policies.
However, Bangladesh did that by increasing the literacy rate of women, while our female literacy rate is barely 50 percent from which the primary and metric pass girls are removed, this rate will further decreases. While the female literacy rate in Bangladesh is 73, which shows how serious we are in population control.
The minister has pointed out well but he needs to pay more attention to the economy instead of climate change and the welfare of the population. How the large population of the country can be used for the betterment of the economy?
