Nibbling At The Boom

SITTING in her mud-walled, tin-roofed, one-room hut, Saleha Begum coyly explains why she decided not to have any more children after the birth of her second child, a son, 13 years ago: "A bigger family would have added to our miseries." Saleha is only one of the 1,100 women of child-bearing age in Pirojali, a remote village of orchards and paddy fields, who have adopted some form of birth control. A feat which has made Pirojali (population: 19,000) a leader in the family planning movement. Its contraceptive prevalence rate (CPR) is now nearly 60 per cent, way above the national average of 45 per cent.

In a country where more children are taken to mean more family income and the best insurance for parents in their old age, particularly in rural areas, a decision to limit family size is often seen as a direct challenge to established norms. This is more so when it comes from the women, who have virtually no say in major family decisions. "It was very hard for me to convince my husband and it took months before he relented and allowed me to go for sterilisation," says Saleha, repeatedly shielding her face with her sari in her embarrassment at discussing such intimate facts with a male stranger in a society where raising a subject even remotely related to sex is taboo.

바카라 웹사이트"Then you've the harder task of convincing the in-laws, who play a dominant role in our society regarding such decisions as birth control," interjects Anwara Begum, a family planning worker. Wife of a poor farmer, Saleha could initially hardly man-age on her husband's meagre income, especially since he had recklessly squandered what little he had inherited from his father on gambling and drinking.

Today, even Saleha's sister-in-law, Feroza Khatun, who was initially against sterilisation, admits she did the right thing: "They're now much better off." Saleha's hut is one of the very few in this tranquil village, 50 km north of Dhaka, which show signs of relative prosperity. Moreover, with the money she saved, she sent her husband to Kuwait as a migrant worker three years ago.

What's brought this spectacular success to this village in particular and to the country in general despite the absence of almost all the prerequisites for fertility decline—literacy, alleviated poverty, low infant mortality, and generally raised living standards—remains a big puzzle for demographic experts.

바카라 웹사이트"We've proved all the modern day demographic theories wrong," says Nurul Hossain of the Family Planning Department who has worked for 29 years to combat population growth in Bangladesh. Pirojali, like most villages in this country, is appallingly underdeveloped, with no paved roads, running water or electricity and a literacy rate corresponding to the national average of 30 per cent.

Hossain says there is a growing awareness of the dangers of unchecked population growth. Backed by foreign donors, the country is now among the top five in the developing world to have successfully initiated family planning steps.

The main credit, however, goes to the dedication of the 50,000 local family planning activists and field workers, mostly women. The story of Anwara Begum, 39, who works for the Pirojali Progoti Sangha, a voluntary organisation, is typical. "When I started seven years ago, I used to be shunned by women if I spoke about birth control," she says. "Though they knew me as I'm from the same village, they were afraid of talking to me." This was primarily because of the in-laws steeped in tradition (religious leaders consider family planning anti-Islamic, a sentiment shared by many Bangladeshis).

The bag she carries filled with condoms, pills and other contraceptive devices, makes her easily distinguishable from other village women. Anwara recalls how she was chased away several times by an elderly woman the moment she spotted Anwara with her bag near her house. "But I didn't give up. I took it as a challenge," she notes. After six years of persistence, Anwara won her over. And the result: three of her daughters-in-law have just two children each, one is pregnant with her first child and only one daughter-in-law has three children. All of them use some form of birth control. Moreover, she's now greeted with smiles in every home she visits. Anwara's efforts highlight the achievement of the local field workers in breaking down the barriers of inhibitions in rural communities.

Yet, underneath all the euphoria lies a dark fear. Bangladesh is bursting at the seams with 783 people per sq km—the world's densest. And a population of nearly 120 million packed in a land area of just about 145,000 sq km. Experts point out that if the present growth rate of 2.1 per cent continues, the population of Bangladesh will be 250 million by the year 2030. Most worrisome is that 40 per cent of the population is below 20 years of age—the most highly reproductive group. "But we can't sit back and worry," says Hossain. "We must win the battle."