The population explosion in Pakistan is unprecedented. We are the fifth most populous country of the world after India, China, America and Indonesia. The census carried out last year placed our population at 207 million. There has been about 57 pc increase in population of this country between the census done in 1998 and in 2017.
120 million of our population is under 25 years of age. The successive governments in this country failed to utilise our demographic power to turn around the economy of the country by investing very little in education. Slow growth rate was also a contributed to it. It is in the evidence that since 1970 eighty percent of the conflicts in the world occurred in the countries with young population. Our tragedy is that our country too has turned into a breeding ground for extremism, fanaticism, terrorism and other social evils in which the young unemployed population is indulged. Small wonder, 80 percent of the suicide bombers that had let loose a reign of terror in this country a couple years back were teenagers.
The political parties , unfortunately, are not giving due attention to the population explosion in the country. China too once faced a similar problem of a much bigger magnitude but its then leadership under the comradeship of Mao Ze Dong managed to find a solution to it. Pakistan is not China and we don’t have a leader of Mao’s calibre in our midst. Still we can control our rapidly growing population through out-of-the -box solutions provided our political leaders sink their petty differences and work for the cause of Pakistan. Like the water and power crises, the population explosion also needs a concerted effort by all and sundry if we are to ensure stability of this country.
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