Unemployment & Over-Population
By Mowahid Hussain Shah
Instead of partisan bickering and shouting matches, which often characterize discussions on TV and public forums, there was refreshing break from the pattern. A cerebral discussion was held on unemployment and over-population and its intersection with the role of media in Pakistan. It was organized under the auspices of the Hameed Nizami Press Institute of Pakistan at Lahore and was hosted by veteran TV anchor Absar Abdul Ali. It featured also comments by former Vice-Chancellor of Punjab University and senior economist Dr. Rafiq Ahmed, as well as a well-documented paper read by Professor Qais Aslam. I was also asked to participate.
Unemployment often leads to social isolation, low self-esteem, family breakdown, depression and other related hardships. It also can have an inter-generational impact. The unemployed may not have the capacity to provide even minimal schooling to children. The ripple effects of unemployment are widespread and the alienation it causes amongst the youth makes them ripe targets for manipulation and exploitation by nefarious elements. In some sectors, it has acted as a game-changing paradigm, with tangible impact on the social milieu, and twisting thereby the normal goal-setting priorities of the youth. For some, the short-term lure of outlaw activity is difficult to resist.
Lack of economic development, quality jobs and youth bulge are generating social disharmony. This discourages many a talented idealist who wishes to contribute at home but finds the only opportunities to ply his trade and skills are abroad.
Connected with joblessness, and running parallel to it, is the specter of over-population. Its incidental effects have led to deforestation, environmental pollution, poverty, crime as well as more shrinkage of space for employment opportunities. The earth circumference is 24,0000 miles, which caters now to nearly 7 billion people. One and a half million are added every week.
In England, in 1798, the scholar Thomas Robert Malthus propounded his theories on population, through his pamphlet “An Essay on the Principle of Population,” in which he contended that population expands geometrically, while food supply increases arithmetically. The growing incompatibility between resources and requirements is now becoming increasingly glaring. It has also endangered animal life along with flora and fauna.
Concomitant to it are industrial gases, which are contributing to global warming and causing sea levels to rise because of melting ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica. Twenty years ago, in 1992, Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, President of Maldives, warned the UN that, because of rising sea levels, the Maldives island chain – with its highest point less than eight feet above sea level – might simply disappear.
What is missing is a viable plan of action to tackle the looming challenges.
Family planning runs into hurdles because of division of opinion within the scholarly clergy. In Egypt and Iran, there has been some success in having such efforts endorsed by clergy. More doable immediately are systematic skill-creation schemes to meet head-on these twin challenges.
Dr. Rafiq cited the noted economist Joseph Schumpeter (1883-1950), who posited that economic planning is insufficient unless it is backed with the passion to perform. The late Jamil Nishtar had put it well: “Pakistan is not a poor country; it’s a poorly managed country.”
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