World population data sheet 2020 released by the US Population Reference Bureau, place Pakistan among the developing countries with alarming population growth rate. Total population of the country has reached to 220.9 million which will double within the next 10-15 years, if a comprehensive plan and vigorous strategies for population control are not implemented to reasonably lower the fast birth rate. Currently, the growth rate per married couple is 3.6. The skewed policies implemented during the past 50 years for economic and social sector development have resulted in stagnant economy, rampant unemployment and poverty, low literacy rate with widening gender gap, food insecurity in addition to myriad social diseases. There is dire need to bring the population growth rate from the current 2.9 percent to 2 percent by creating mass awareness for promoting smaller family norms, preferably having two children a couple. The developing country like Bangladesh presents a model worth emulation. Before the cessation of former East Pakistan, the eastern wing of the country had a population 20 million more than the former West Pakistan. Now Bangladesh, according to World’s Population data sheet, has a population of 16.9 million, sixty million less than Pakistan. This is no small achievement. The answer about this difference is simple. The divergent human resource development path taken by Pakistan and Bangladesh since 1971 has resulted in the latter’s now having considerably improved social indicators, despite once commonly associated with poverty and over population. Bangladesh succeeded in achieving lower population growth with consistent government interventions such as introducing larger scale health workers programme, public awareness on family planning across mass media platform and of course garnering moral and intellectual support from Ulema and religious scholars. On the contrary, Pakistan’s Lady Health Workers Programme faltered under pressure of heavy work, limited financial resource allocations and poor salaries paid to employees. Meanwhile, sustained media campaign for population planning could not be carried out under the premise of public decency. In Bangladesh gender parity was achieved in elementary and secondary education by 2015 in addition to women empowerment by providing greater opportunities of employment and entrepreneurship of small scale manufacturing and business enterprises.
