Overpopulation to become a serious problem soon

The fears of the overpopulated conditions of Bangladesh have been termed baseless and unfounded by a number of analysts. Rather, they have been pointing to its growing agricultural productivity, particularly cereal production, that maintained a balance of sorts between population growth and food supply to assert the opposite view. However, nobody can dispute on strong logical ground the fact that there are limits to such productivity rises. Furthermore, economic laws also uphold such saturation points. In many ways, Bangladesh is reaching these saturation points and the same are reflected in land scarcity for different purposes and the problems of housing, greater stresses in the national budgets in respect of providing adequately for employment, education, healthcare and other basic needs. Indeed, there is hardly any sector that is not facing the stresses from overpopulation and the same would only multiply if the population is allowed to grow at the current rate of some 1.48 per cent to be some 180 million in only ten years from now. The fast growing population and their laying hands indiscriminately on natural resources for survival such as on trees and vegetation, intruding into eco systems, etc., have already endangered the environment and bio-diversity of this country. The degradation can only worsen without checks in the population growth rate. The quality of life in the country which has deteriorated from its present population size, will only be further downgraded from unchecked population growth. Overpopulation leading to vanishing or depleting of resources and the scramble arising from the same, can, thus, cause social tensions and conflict to add to the decline in the quality of life. These things are now showing up in the Bangladesh context. And the ugly faces of such social unrest with their political implications as well, could be much worse even in the near future if reduction and stabilisation in the population growth rate are not achieved quickly. In this backdrop, it is fanciful to say that the country's population can be turned into human resources. But the hard realities are that in their present conditions of illiteracy, hunger and deprivation, the people of the country in large measures remain more as liabilities than assets. Ruma Islam Dhanmandi Dhaka.