Pakistan and the politics of population management

Every year when world population day rolls along, we talk about our failures in population management and all the potential disasters that entails. We talk about how Pakistani women have the highest number of children and the lowest access to family planning in the entire region; only about 34% of Pakistani couples use any form of contraception, as opposed to 77% in Iran, 67% in India and 62% in Bangladesh.

We then look for causes: we lament social attitudes that force women to have more and more children without any regard to their or their children’s’ health – the statistics are grim here as well: Pakistan has the highest maternal mortality and infant mortality rates in all of South Asia, nearly double that of Bangladesh and India.

Often, we point to factors like the lack of female education and the related lack of female participation in the workforce where, once again, we trail behind our neighbours. The consequences are clear: if we continue like this, and there is no reason to believe we will not, then by 2050 our population will have reached 400 million and we will be hard pressed to feed, clothe and employ so many people.

But little attention is paid to the fact that the very structure of the Pakistani state disincentivizes population management to begin with, and to find proof of that one need look no further than the structure of the National Finance Commission award, which provides the formula and the basis on which resources are divided between the federation and the provinces.

Here we see that a staggering 82% is allocated solely on the basis of population, with only 10% allocated based on poverty and 5% on the basis of revenue generated by the target area. Take that data and then take a look at the population distribution map of Pakistan, and you’ll see that this formula ensures that the vast majority of funds will always be allocated to the areas with the highest populations.

In Bangladesh, the weightage of population has been reduced to 60% while the allocation for geographical size counts for 20%. Such a formula, if applied in Pakistan, will go a long way towards addressing the concerns of Balochistan.

Zarrar Khuhro

There’s a logic to this formula, and this is that in the eyes of the state all citizens are equal and therefore, according to proponents of the prevailing system, population is the most objective, predictable and equal basis for apportioning resources.

But equal does not mean equitable, and the current formula ignores the stark reality that there are huge economic disparities between different regions of the country, and that the weightage given to population means areas with less-population density, which also usually tend to be underdeveloped (it’s a vicious cycle), will almost certainly always remain under-developed. There are huge political costs to this approach as well: Balochistan, the largest province in terms of area, and the smallest province in terms of size, has always complained of unfair treatment and that decades’ old complaint also provides fodder for the ongoing insurgency. Under the current dispensation, there is really no way to bridge the development gap which, in effect, makes the structure of the state a majoritarian one in which the provinces with the largest population will always dominate both politically and economically. 

That, in turn, exacerbates the ethnic fault lines in the country and creates conflict.

It also provides no incentive for those provinces to make a serious attempt to manage population. Why should they when a large population is the key to getting more resources?

There’s another aspect to our population-centric model which also adds to the deprivation of Balochistan, and this is that political power is also apportioned on the basis of population. Think for a moment from the perspective of a national political party deciding where to allocate its political capital. Would you focus on the entirety of Balochistan which would, at most, gain you 17 seats in the National Assembly, or would you focus on one of the larger cities of Punjab or Sindh, which could net you an equal, if not greater, number of seats? Hence, the issues of Balochistan will never truly be of interest for most major political parties, simply because even in the best-case scenario there are relatively few political gains to be made.

Coming back to the NFC award, there is a dire need to rationalize the formula for the allocation of resources by reducing the weightage of population by at least 4 percentage points, thus creating less of a disincentive for reducing population size. Unfortunately, representatives from larger provinces are unlikely to back such a move, given that it would directly penalize the areas they are representing.

However, if anyone wants to work on these lines, it would be instructive to study how Bangladesh and India have tackled these problems. In Bangladesh, the weightage of population has been reduced to 60% while the allocation for geographical size counts for 20%. Such a formula, if applied in Pakistan, will go a long way towards addressing the concerns of Balochistan where already sparse development rupees are swallowed up by the vast areas and distances.

India, for its part, has also tackled this problem by capping the weightage for population at 15%. By doing so, India has also headed off a potential clash between highly populated northern states and southern states that had successfully brought their fertility rates down.

As with so many problems in Pakistan, the confluence of vested interest and the inertia of a somnolent state makes sweeping reform difficult but, at some stage, statesmanship must prevail in order to ensure the long-term survival of the state itself.

– Zarrar Khuhro is a Pakistani journalist who has worked extensively in both the print and electronic media industry. He is currently hosting a talk show on Dawn News.

Twitter: @ZarrarKhuhro