Consider this as a serious heads up (an advance warning of biblical proportions). This is a ticking time bomb. Some disturbing demographic trends that India (in particular) and the west should monitor and make arrangements for in their defence planning and strategy-making:
Pakistan is experiencing one of the more traumatic periods in its history.
Pakistan is experiencing rapid urbanization; while a third of the country's people have long been rurally based, at least 50 percent of the population is expected to live in cities by the 2020s.
Additionally, with a median age of 21, Pakistan's population is profoundly youthful. Two-thirds are less than 30 years old, and as a percentage of total population, only Yemen has more people under 24.
If Pakistanis are to enter the workforce, they will need to be properly educated -- yet a staggering 40 million out of Pakistan's 70 million 5-to-19-year-olds are not in school. Additionally, if Pakistanis are to be gainfully employed, the economy must be large enough to absorb them, no simple feat in a labor economy that at present creates only a million new jobs a year, yet could face 175 million potential workers by 2030 (current unemployment runs at about 15 percent, and underemployment is substantial as well). Unsurprisingly, Pakistan's Planning Commission deputy chairman estimated last year that in order to employ Pakistan's nearly 100-million-strong under-20 population, GDP growth will need to soar to 9 percent (it is currently mired at 2.4 percent).
The most likely and devastating consequence of Pakistan's demographic dilemma is natural resource scarcity. Pakistan is already desperately short on water and land.
Water availability has plummeted from about 5,000 cubic meters per capita in the 1950s to less than 1,500 today -- perilously close to the 1,000 cubic meters per capita level designated as water-scarce.
Meanwhile, according to one striking estimate, Pakistan loses nearly three acres of good agricultural land every 20 minutes. Given Pakistan's population density of roughly 230 people per square kilometer, such shortfalls put immense pressure on remaining supply.
Compounding these constraints is Pakistan's poor resource governance.
Unless Pakistan's natural resource governance takes a dramatic turn for the more judicious, resource scarcity could soon be more reality than threat.
According to the U.N. Population Division's newest mid-range estimates, Pakistan's population will rise to 275 million by 2050. However, this estimate optimistically assumes an eventual drop in Pakistan's total fertility rate (TFR), which now registers at about 3.6 children per woman.
Assuming TFR remains constant -- by no means an unlikely prospect, given that the country's contraceptive prevalence rate hovers at only 30 percent -- the projections soar to nearly 380 million people.
Meanwhile, as early as 2025, Pakistan's total water demand is expected to exceed availability by 100 billion cubic meters. This deficit represents five times the amount of water that can presently be stored in the reservoirs of the vast Indus River system. Put differently, in less than 15 years, Pakistan's chief water storage source could fall far short of satisfying demand for humanity's lifeblood.
Islamabad has signaled its intention to bring demographics to the policy front burner. It has (euphemistically) christened 2011 as "Population Year"(Thats when pakis work hard to increase their numbers)
Here's a doomsday scenario: Those Hindus who recently arrived in India as migrants are a first trickle. They will probably be absorbed. However, wait till the pakjabis and the mohajirs start arriving. With political pressures from Indian Punjab, UP and Bihar, these new economic migrants will demand to be reunited with their third generation kin. Then, with rapid urbanization and growth of the radical parties that will promise jobs and food to the unemployed youth in return for jihad, and their kin folk in India as the fifth columnists, that's when the $hit will really hit the fan.
