Ugly Truth Why Census Is Not Being Taken Even After 20 Years: -Pakistan's population bomb: 240 million in 2030 
Fifteen-year-old Nasreen Qutubuddin beams happily at her mother, Haseena Bibi, and says: "Now that she is well all I want is to get some good uninterrupted sleep."
Belonging to Alipur village in Muzaffargarh, they made a 24-hour bus journey (and Ganja Sharif has no hesitation in sending his private plane to Kabul to pick up Gilani's son !) to reach Koohi Goth Women’s Hospital in Karachi to get the mother treated for a serious child-birth injury she suffered and which left her incontinent.
Nasreen says she had not slept fitfully in the last three years after her mother developed this condition while giving birth to her eighth child, who did not survive.
Being the eldest and a daughter, she'd have to get up every two hours in the night to change and wash her mother's clothes, she explained.
The daughter in a "normal country" would have been concentrating on her school studies; where is the
Aam Abdul in the picture, who is responsible for this constant (marital) assault on the poor woman? why is he
not being interviewed ?
But not anymore as Bibi is dry now. She is as happy as Nasreen but for a different reason. "As soon as I am up and about, I will get her married off. We had to delay it for too long because she was taking care of me, the house and her siblings," she explains.
Thinking of marrying off a 15 year old ?
...but Haseena says: "The custom is that a girl must be married off as soon as she gets her period."
Fortunately for Nasreen, once married, she does not plan to have as many kids. "I think I will have three or four," she said shyly.
In Pakistan, six million married women say they don't want more children or want to space births, but are unable to do so," says Dr Zeba Sathar, country director of the Population Council of Pakistan. This comes to one in four women with an unmet need. And like Nasreen, most married Pakistani women (and men) want not more than four children on an average.
If you want to look at it optimistically it is still better than 8 or 9 !
In Pakistan, six million married women say they don't want more children or want to space births, but are unable to do so," says Dr Zeba Sathar, country director of the Population Council of Pakistan. This comes to one in four women with an unmet need. And like Nasreen, most married Pakistani women (and men) want not more than four children on an average.
"It's a nightmare traversing main arteries in Karachi now; imagine what it will be like 15 years from now when Sindh's urban population will reach 50pc!" he exclaims.
Pakistan's population is growing by around 1.8pc a year but the economy has failed to keep pace with the population growth. At this pace and if the population growth does not slow down, it will outpace Indonesia by 2030 as the country with the largest Muslim population.
"Rapid population growth was an emergency twenty years ago; now the country should be in the disaster management mode, and doing something on a war footing," says Midhet who smells the same lack of "political will" in the present government towards arresting population that Tarar had blamed previous governments for after attending the National Population Summit in Islamabad on Nov 5 and 6.
Ticking (Islamic) Time Bomb as they say
"As far as I know, Pakistan is the only country where population and health departments are working separately," says Thaver.
Malsi is a big factor in all of this, but no one is willing to say it !
Noted architect and urban development expert, Arif Hasan says the population residing in squatter settlements has now increased to 61pc or 1.2 million households. Energy use could quadruple; water will be an increasingly scarce resource.
"The kind of violence that you see today in Karachi, is just a trailer of what is to come in the not so far future," warned Midhet.
Thaver says he would want more emphasis on FP in the pre-service training of the doctors and nurses and the tertiary care hospitals. "They are not usually advocating or even offering FP services," he says.
Since the target is youth, Thaver says using social media, mobile phone technologies, free online help services would prove beneficial. Keeping social and cultural sensitivity in mind, age-appropriate discussions on the issue of ‘population explosion’ and its consequences can also be made part of the school educational curriculum.
All these high sounding technical solutions presuppose / assume a lot of things, applicable in a "normal" country, which Pakistan in not !
