The ever growing population of earth has been a factor that has always worried the intellectuals and scientists of the world. They maintain with emphasis that the currently available resources can never supply the increasing demands of the world population. People would die of hunger and famine, unless some corrective measures are taken.
They emphasize that the only and genuine solution is ‘population management’. Ways should be adopted, by coercion or temptation, to check the unending production of human babies. This is inevitable, they claim, for the safety and prosperity of the future of a common man.
However, how far is this theory correct? Can we depend upon this supposition only on the grounds that it was presented by some western learned scholars? Has human history ever testified to the truth of it? Has there been any ignorable advancement of national resources as compared to the speedy growth of human population?
Let us, therefore, first analyze this well propagated population theory, unbiased and with reason, especially with respect to our country.
In 1947, when Pakistan appeared on globe, the total population of our country (only West Pakistan) was approximately fifty million. Per capita income was obviously very low then. A remuneration of even Rs. 500 was deemed attractive.
A family in those days consisted of not less than 10 to 12 members (overpopulated in the current terms) with only one person as its breadwinner and with no concept of fetching any additional revenue through some other adult family members. All used to confine over what the family head earned for them, howsoever meager that happened to be.
With this situation, anyone can easily conceive the pattern of human life of those days. The living standard naturally used to be absolutely poor. None of the present facilities ever existed. A person owning merely a bicycle was deemed a prosperous one. There was no fashion of wearing even wristwatches.
Tasty and varied food items like pizza, burger, imported ice creams, and varieties of cold drinks were merely a dream. A breakfast consisting of simple bread, toast and egg was deemed a marvellous one. Students could hardly seek education beyond intermediate level, because of the poor financial position of their parents.
Thus, we can easily adjudge how weak the standard of living of our fathers was in the period when the population of the country was not just thin but very thin.
But now, when the country has crossed over half a century of its age, and its population has multiplied more than twice of what it was in 1947, our standard of living has improved many times. Per capita income is no less than Rs. 5000 per month, whereas in many of the cases one or two additional members are also busy in generating income.
Children are acquiring education today what they could not conceive of 50 years back. Each and every house is now definitely equipped with at least one refrigerator, a sofa set, an electronic iron, a colour TV, a washing machine, one double bed couch, and number of electric fans fitted in all of its rooms. In majority of the families, the old and conventional means of conveyance, the bicycle, has become a story of the past.
Cars are a common feature of our routine nowadays. Likewise, the eating habits of our masses have faced a revolutionary change. Taste of our people now is not limited to the customary food items of simple bread, rice, curry, or chutney. Food items today have changed both quantity-cum-quality-wise to meet the new tastes of their tongues.
These extraordinary improvements in our daily lifestyle thus prove that a common man of today is enjoying a more prosperous and comfortable life as compared to fifty years ago. This should have obviously declined on account of the two-fold increase of the country’s population. Similarly, the per capita income should have also halved and a scarcity of food, clothing, and other facilities should have engulfed the masses on the basis of that theory.
The history of mankind has always proved that the general resources of world have never failed to match the ever-increasing size of population. Hypothesis of ‘the resources lagging far behind the advancement of population’ has never historically been true.
With the invention of heavy-duty machines in the beginning of the twentieth century, mass industrial production began. Opportunities of employment increased, helping people raise their incomes and afford luxuries, which they could not even dream of before.
Discovery of old hidden wealth of liquid gold, petrol and natural gas has revolutionized the fate of the entire world. Coal and firewood was now replaced by the powerful fuels of petrol and gas.
Then the explosion of diversified, the multi-facet technologies at the end of the twentieth century also gave further comforts and prosperity.
Let us look at some further examples. Today, poultry farming has assumed the status of a flourishing industrial empire, which employs thousands of people. Advancement of technology has helped the world population keep eggs and white meat as part of their daily diet. Similar is the case of fishing and cattle farming. Traditional domestic rearing of cattle could never supply the increasing demand for meat. Explosion of population has given way to the simultaneous explosion of meat and dairy farming.
Thus we can see that Allah (swt), being the Sole Caretaker of the world and mankind, has increased the resources, whenever the population increased. However, it is not the element of over-population that has hampered the progress of economy. Instead, it is the uneven distribution of world’s resources. In circumstances where only 20 percent of the population has captured 80 per cent of the human resources, and where a meager minority has got hold of all agricultural lands, how can the humanity as a whole prosper?
During the famous famine of Somalia, even the tree leaves had stopped growing… However, in the developed Western countries, people destroy their surplus production of milk and meat.
Managing the population – two babies per family, as is the slogan today – is, therefore, not the correct way of uplifting the poor. The right way would be to manage the economy.
Even though our economic planners are highly qualified from Europe and America, the solution they suggest is ‘population planning’. Instead, it should be ‘resources planning’— their just distribution. Abiding by their ‘wise’ formula, we would be doing nothing but putting the horse before the cart!
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