Causes and Prevention of Population Explosion in the Rural Areas of Peshawar

Abstract

One of the major challenges facing Pakistan is the mounting boom in the country’s population. It is expected that if the same pace of population growth continues, the population of country would increase tremendously in the coming years. The effects of such a negative trend are going to be even more exigent for the less developed parts of Pakistan, including NWFP. The main objective of this study is to asses the major causes of population explosion, obstacles to population control and to see the shortcomings in family planning and strategies to overcome them with a focus on the rural areas of Peshawar, NWFP. The paper also deals with the Islamic views on population control and then examines the historical background of birth control. The causes of population explosion have been analyzed in detail, including economic, religious, governmental, psychological, and infrastructure related ones. For the empirical analysis, three types of respondents were selected: family planning government staff, non-governmental organizations’ (NGOs) staff and beneficiaries of both the organizations at selected family planning centers of Peshawar district. After mapping the area and selecting the respondents, the researcher pre-tested the interview schedule and questionnaire, and then data was collected from the sampled respondents. It was found that in order to overcome these factors of population explosion/obstacles to family planning, the government and NGOs are working and have adopted various strategies but a lot more needs to be done. It is suggested that these organizations should change their strategies and should develop a comprehensive program to solve the problem of population explosion and ensure the success of family planning program in the area.