Demographic Perspectives on Pakistan's Development

Population growth is reemerging as a matter of public concern in Pakistan, following a decade in which development issues and activities were overshadowed by war with India, the secession of East Pakistan, the rise and fall of the Bhutto government, and subsequent political turmoil and tension. Demographic trends in the areas that now comprise Pakistan initially attracted attention in the late 1920s and early 1930s, a time of stocktaking in regard to the major irrigation and resettlement program then underway in the central and southern Punjab. Colonial authorities feared sustained population growth would undermine the agricultural prosperity that had been achieved in canal colony schemes. Officials with knowledge of village conditions pressed for an activist policy in which publicity campaigns and visits by field agents would be used to mobilize communities and to change attitudes and aspirations bearing on economic and demographic behavior. As part of the same approach, incentives were to be directed at large landowners, who were expected to play a leading role in the economic and demographic transformation of the rural sector. No such comprehensive strategy was ever pursued by the colonial regime, which was subject to severe political, financial, and manpower constraints in its final years. Concern for the consequences of demographic change was voiced again in the 1960s, a second period of rapid economic advance in Pakistan. Population growth was seen as a factor that could dampen the impact of a development strategy that relied on the entrepreneurship and savings of noncultivating landowners to generate gains in agricultural output and employment. An ambitious family planning program was implemented, along with such policies as liberalization of foreign trade, agrarian reforms, government efforts to ensure supplies of key agricultural inputs, and the creation of a system-the Basic Democracies-of local administration and control. As in the 1930s, however, these enlightened measures foundered

Colonialism · Development economics · Economic growth · Economics · Entrepreneurship · Government (linguistics) · Incentive · Market economy · Political science · Politics · Population · Population growth · Prosperity · Sociology · Politics and Conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Middle East · Social and Economic Development in India · South Asian Studies and Conflicts

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  Open Access•Matt Clement, Matthieu Clément•Cliometrica•2012

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