A poverty stricken out of work labourer committed suicide the other day because he could not feed his family any more. He left behind a wife and six children. The family of eight was living in a one and a half marla one room house. This is not the first case of its nature. There have been instances where people lost life in traffic accidents and left behind 6-10 children to rot. It is generally the lower strata of our people who continue producing children without caring for their income and other resources to bring them up. There is no doubt that over-population is the root cause of all the ills that we are suffering from. The shortage of food, housing and transportation, lack of education facilities, health care and job opportunities, traffic jams, general lawlessness which encompass family feuds,street crimes and large scale corruption etc are the major off shoots of over-population. Unfortunately our country is not as rich in resourcesas the number of people to feed. A glance over the comparative world population will indicate that the countries with lesser population are better administered, progressive and prosperous. Without controlling the ever growing population we have no chance of eliminating poverty from our dear Pakistan. I believe there is a population planning department in our government set up. What a wonderfully sweet nap they have enjoyed all these years. Calcutta was considered as the most highly populated city in the Indo-Pak sub continent. I had a chance to visit the city during the 1996 World Cup and found that you could not walk around without rubbing shoulders with others. A few days back the list of 'Ten big cities of the world appeared in a newspaper. I was surprised to see Karachi having surpassed Calcutta in population. What a great achievement? RAFI NASIM, Lahore, March 14.