Population growth rate rising again
Our performance in the field of family planning was equally dismal during the two years previous to the year mentioned above. In the years 2004 and 2003, population growth rates in Bangladesh were 2.8 per cent and 2.6 per cent respectively. From the year 2000 to the year 2002, each year the annual population growth rate was 1.59 per cent.
How come, when population control is one of our most important national priorities, our annual population growth rate has jumped up from 1.59 per cent to 2.9 percent in three years! Our official target is to reduce annual population growth rate to 1 per cent by the year 2010. The target sounds now a joke.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel. What has caused the population growth rate in Bangladesh to shoot up over the last three years? According to Unicef, infant (under one year of age) mortality rate in Bangladesh has reduced from 149 per thousand in 1960 to 46 per thousand in 2003; and under-5 child mortality rated has reduced from 248 per thousand in 1960 to 69 per thousand in 2003. Again, the same UN organization says, in Bangladesh, the life expectancy has gone up from 44 years in 1970 to 62 years in 2003.
We could not step up our family planning program, keeping pace with the reduced child mortality and heightened life expectancy. This situation has contributed to the waxing of the annual population growth rate in the country. Our family planning program has become almost moribund, as it has not been getting periodical prodding from the international donor countries and agencies. The donors have now been busier in combating HIV/Aids, giving less importance to family planning.
A few years back, donors advised our government to stop house-to-house family planning service and open family planning clinics at locality level; we complied with that advice. This change of strategy in family planning program has also contributed to the shooting up of our annual population growth rate over the last few years. Now the donors concede their mistake in giving such advice and we are paying the price of that mistake.
As we know, Sonargaon was one of the ancient capitals of Bangladesh, 28 kms south of Dhaka. A few years back, some of my friends and I took a motor-launch from Sonargaon for a river cruise in the river Megna. After about two hours journey downstream we reached a shoal. At that place, the Megna is so wide that it is impossible to see either of the banks of the river from that shoal. The motor-launch anchored at the shoal; we disembarked from the boat to be greeted by hundreds of pot-bellied, rickety and half naked children. While walking along, I asked one of them whether he used to go to school. The answer was no, as there was no school on the shoal.
A few grown ups came forwards to meet us. I asked them what was the name of the shoal.
"I don't know," answered one of them.
"Balur Char," someone said from behind.
"No, that's not the name," protested another person.
This short conversation meant that the shoal had no name till then, such a new shoal it was.
We went up to the dwelling place of the shoal. There we found young women clustering around with suckling children at their laps. Children of all ages were there everywhere. A new shoal with such a high population! Unimaginable.
"They need family planning," I said in a low voice to a friend standing beside me. One of the women, who seemed ready-witted among her companions, overheard me and said to us, "What can we do, there's no medicine on this shoal."
By the word medicine she actually meant contraceptives.
It is the duty of the government to bring each and every remote area of the country under a family planning program to make contraceptives available to each fertile couple. There is no scope on the part of the government to shirk this duty, if we don't want to be bogged down deeper with the weight of over-population.
Someone among the shoal dwellers told me that once the visiting British High Commissioner (not the honourable present High Commissioner) promised to set up a school on the shoal. I don't know whether the shoal dwellers have already got the school. If they have not yet got a school, than the government should set a school there for the children of the shoal.
Not only our towns, even our villages have become extremely crowded. These days children swarm everywhere in a village of Bangladesh. They belong to the "vaccination generation." We have been successful in reducing the child mortality rate through pursuing an aggressive child immunization program; but utterly have failed in half-hearted birth control program.
The "vaccination generation" is coming up of age. They will need job, shelter, clothes, and medicine. Will it be possible for the government to provide jobs to so many young people entering the job market every year? What future is waiting for this generation? Till now we have been able to increase our food production. But how far will we be able to do so? No doubt, our soil is extremely fertile; still this soil has is yield limitation. Every year, expansion of urban areas due to ever-increasing population is engulfing more and more of our arable lands. Rivers, canals, wetlands, hills, forests, etc of the country are being encroached upon by the extra population.
We as a nation remains obsessed with the political hurly-burly in the country, in what America is doing in Iraq, in debate on "who is the declarer of independence," and so on. We must turn our attention to the serious problems our nation is facing and concentrate all our efforts to get rid of those problems.
We must think of what Bangladesh we are leaving behind for our children.