A social problem aiding the population bomb and other ills

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Enayet Rasul
Bangladesh is a wonder. It is a wonder because of its small physical size but the sea of people living off such a small parcel of land. With only 55,126 square miles of land territories, Bangladesh is one of the world's smaller countries in physical size. But in terms of its population size, over 140 million people, it is already the 8th largest country out of some 180 countries. Its population density is the highest in the world - 2,100 persons per square mile.
What is Bangladesh's future in this mind boggling demographic situation. The ones who are too optimistic point to the absence of large scale famine in Bangladesh. They would discuss growing agricultural productivity over the years and the maintenance of a balance of sorts between the growing population and the availability of different resources .
But the not so optimistic ones -- the sober realists -- have an outlook which is very different. They are very worried by the present population growth rate at 1 .48 per cent which is an official estimation only. Privately and reliably, the growth rate is considered to be well over 2 per cent. Even if the official rate is relied on, the population would double at this rate to 280 million three decades from now. But with this happening, in their view, life and living in this country would surely and direly get affected. There would be unceasing scrambles not only for finding living space but for standing pace, they say. Life in Bangladesh from scarcities, social and economic deprivations and hence tensions and conflict caused by its unbearable overpopulation, could turn out to be a very bad experience like the one described by the seventeen century English legal thinker, Hobbes, as " poor, nasty, brutish and short."
The World Population Day was observed by Bangladesh recently with the rest of the world. There were discussions at different forums on the occasion that laid the blame for Bangladesh's unbridled population growth mainly on the poorly run population control programme . But there was not so much focus on social and religious practices that encourage the high growth rate. Campaign to spread the use of contraceptives and adopt other family planning measures, will not really make so much of a difference till these social barriers are addressed.
For example, a daily newspaper reported recently on how a 14 year old girl was rescued from an attempted under-age marriage at Laxmipur village in Tala upazilla as over a hundred students from a high school there took to the streets in protest. But this form of protests and the positive outcome from the same, are noted to be rare in contrast to the many cases of child marriages which are consummated successfully in the country on a daily basis. And without ensuring that such marriages cannot take place, how it can be possible to put a hard brake on population growth ? Fertility is very high among children who have attained puberty or come near to it. They tend to procreate the fastest in contrast to the population in the other age groups. Thus, population control activities can achieve the greatest success by preventing children or teenagers from marrying.
But the trend of early marriage , specially of females, is still found to be strong among the rural people in Bangladesh in a situation where the population of the country remains preponderantly rural. The greater number in the population consider it safe to have their teenage girls married off at the fastest. According to tradition, a female who has not been married in her teens has perhaps missed the train of good luck because of some deficiency on her part. Thus, parents or guardians feel a psychological pressure to get the girls married early lest they face the prospects of spinsterhood. Besides, the egotistical and male dominated society also puts preference on the marriage of very young maidens. Young girls as brides are preferred by the bridegrooms and their family members over the older ones.
But the outcome of these practices are early motherhood with crushing burden of the same on these girls who have barely come out of childhood themselves. They lose their health in the process, many die while delivering babies and suffer other related health problems. The major casualty is their education leading to denial of awareness and consciousness and taking of the major decisions of their life such as marriage by themselves. The young and uneducated brides become the typical housekeepers and undernourished mothers of equally undernourished children and little else. Early marriage means faster procreation and adding undesirably to the already existing high population growth of the country in its overpopulated conditions.
Women constitute half the population of Bangladesh. The country's economy can gain a great deal if this half of the population can lead productive lives and are enabled to take conscious decisions of their own such as growing up to adulthood as single persons, marrying late and engaging in occupations outside the bounds of their homes. But this will require a social movement and the quicker it is launched by conscious groups in society, the better for the country in all respects.
A conference of social workers and women organized under the Gender and Development (GAD) alliance was held sometime ago. Speakers in the conference underlined that 70 per cent of the girls in their teens are still forced into marriage. Recommendations came from the conference to the government to ensure the birth certificates of bridegrooms and brides during the marriage registration. The suggested minimum allowable age of marriage for men was 23 and 18 years for the brides. The details of the GAD conference were reported in this paper. Last year, a similar conference was organized by two NGOs, the Planned Parenthood Federation (JPPF) and Global Initiative. It discussed mainly the empowerment issues of women in our society and examined how early marriage and the fall-outs from the same affected adversely the empowerment process of women and, thus, curbed their potential for contribution to the economy. A seminar of the same nature was held under the auspices of the British High Commission in Dhaka .
The focus area of these seminars and conference indeed merits a national attention. Early marriage of women is still more the trend among the rural people in Bangladesh and the population of the country is still preponderantly rural. Urban women in the higher classes are seen to be getting married later in life in comparison to rural women but they are still a small minority in the population.
Clearly, child marriage is a curse which threatens the economic and social security of the country. It is high time to build effective resistance to it through waging a persisting social campaign, introduction of appropriate legislation to frustrate such marriage and the strict enforcement of the laws to be made for application in this regard.