Pakistan tried to introduce population control program several times, but failed to effectively implement or develop an understanding among the people. The government faced tremendous backlash from the people. Some of the main reasons are listed below:
1.Conservative society:
We live in a society where people are not open about topics relating to sex. Even education couldn’t help them to come out of their nutshells. As far as family planning goes, most of the people aren’taware of the the idea of a limited size of family. Commercials, being advertised, are not watched amongst families and no one provides advice to the people for having a control system on the growth of population. This leads to the ignorance of such plans.
2.Rivalry amongst the government officials within the government:
There were many projects being implemented simultaneously. Due to a breakdown in communication amongst the officials involved in the family planning campaign and also constant rivalry, not much progress was achieved.
3. Perfect family – a boy and a girl:
All the commercials showed an image of a perfect family as having a boy and a girl., which led to the concept of having a perfect family with a gender balance, means one can not have two daughters or two sons ? In view of the traditional preference for a male child, and also to help raise the status of the female child, some of the advertising, at least, could have shown two female children as comprising the “ideal family”. The planners now need to move beyond the “Two children= happy family” syndrome. It is time to confront the fears and misgivings associated with the use of contraceptive products.
4. Celebrity endorsing:
As no famous faces was attached to the campaign, such as a cricketer, it failed to grasp much needed attention from the people. Hence, normal advertisement couldn’t create the hype as required.
5. Funding:
Most of the projects which get a set back are due to the irregular funding from the government. One of the main causes for the failure of this campaign in Pakistan was also due to the lack of funds to conduct its activities; several employees were not given their proper dues.
6.Target audience:
There has been also a fair deal of misuse of media. For example, funds spent in placing ads in the expensive English press could be better utilized on non-traditional media. While English newspaper readers do need to be reached, the kind of messages being placed miss their target audience by a mile.
7. Censor issues:
The only product to be promoted in the mass media was “Saathi” condoms. Distributed by Wood-wards (Pakistan) Limited, as part of an US AID-funded project, the advertising campaign was launched on T.V. Even then, PTV censored the product pack, while NTM which, till then, was independent of PTV’s censor board, showed the commercial with the pack.
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