Pakistan is fixated on its nuclear armed foe, India. Yet we are far more likely to be destroyed by “the time bomb ticking away in homes across the country” – our explosive population growth. There are now nearly 200 million of us, a rise of more than 60 million in just the last 15 years. Outside sub-Saharan Africa, few countries have such rapidly growing numbers: the average household now contains seven. This mushrooming of our people intensifies the problems that already plagued the country – extremism and abject poverty. Half of us are illiterate; we have water and electricity shortages; two years ago, after catastrophic floods, we even had a famine. Yet no effort is made to halt the relentless increase. We don’t even discuss contraception, much less promote access to it. The only time the topic ever arises is when “some ignorant cleric” is invited on a TV talk show to “fulminate against Western plots to limit the Muslim population through family planning”. (Irfan Hussain, Dawn, Karachi, Pakistan)

It appears that world population has reached something of a plateau, thanks to better education of women and other factors. But there will still be nine billion people. Water is already a problem, and food supply is problematical.

Epicureans are practical people. They prefer to have a better standard of living for fewer people than listen to the world religions, all of which want more babies and more adherents and to keep them poor, ignorant and obedient. The Moslems and the Roman Catholic church have much to answer for. I dare say Jesus, were he alive today,would support family planning, but since he is not alive, we have to rely on highly intelligent Greek philosophers, who would, I suspect, think that huge populations breed huge problems.