Stand up, be counted

It has been decades since we had a proper census. The good news is that we have been told that ahead of a meeting of the Council of Common Interests (CCI), the military has assured the government it will review the number of troops it can commit for monitoring the population census, rekindling hopes the much-awaited headcount could begin with a slight delay.

We had planned to have a much-delayed census conducted in March 2016. Our last census was held in 1998. It has been nearly two decades since then. The 1998 census was conducted under a cloud. One hopes this time around there will be more transparency.

The national census is important not only for the distribution of resources in a country but also for a number of other equally important reasons. Not only do we need to know how many people we have, but also what is their composition in terms of age, gender and area of residence. We do not know how many people in Pakistan are under 18, for example. We have been relying on estimates for the past two decades.

The General Headquarters has committed 100,000 troops, which is about one-fourth of the initial requirements pitched by the Federal Bureau of Statistics to monitor and supervise the census and maintain law and order during the exercise.

Why cannot we make better use of technology? For example, in some countries the census is conducted by making everyone stand out in the open at a certain day and time and a satellite from above took pictures. This is also outdated today and more strides have now been taken.

As important as counting the number of people in our country is also how fairly and accurately this is done. A census is a very complicated affair. In many countries, outside parties have been contracted to do this. We are not sure how competent the Federal Bureau of Statistics is to conduct this.

There is a lot of politics involved. The question is – how do we conduct a census that is acceptable to all. In this, we have to be mindful that just like the national elections, a number of interests are at play. We need to be honest in our approach and fair in our work. Can the present government do that?

The redistribution of wealth in terms of provinces is just one aspect of a census. We also have to look at the representation in parliament. We cannot continue to have a prime minister of Punjab. We need a prime minister of Pakistan. As things stand, other provinces are under-represented. And it seems all the development work is being done in the bigger province.

In the last census we were able to gauge that there were more women than men in Pakistan. This needs to be kept in mind when reserving jobs and seats for women, who should ideally have a larger share.

We also now need to do away with the outdated and discriminatory quota system that our premiers continue extending for decades. Government recruitment must be done on the basis of merit, and not birthright.

While the introduction of the quota system in government recruitment several decades back did help address the imbalance in the representation of different ethnic groups in government service, it has today outlived its utility. For us to move ahead, merit should be the sole criteria. This quota system may suit some people, but it is an unfair system and has scared away many of our best and brightest.

As things stand today, 50 per cent of government jobs are reserved for Punjab and 40 per cent for the rest of the country, with only ten per cent on merit. This kind of system rarely exists outside Pakistan. In some countries under-represented communities have some reserved seats. But to run the whole government’s recruitment on the basis of reserved seats defies logic.

One of the reasons quoted by observers for delaying the census in the country has been because certain provinces do not want a reallocation of resources.  But we need to know how many people live in which province. We are told that the earlier assumption of 50 per cent of the population lives in Punjab does not hold true anymore. So we have to look ahead.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 29^th,  2016.

Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow @ETOpEd on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.