A census in 2017

The national census in Pakistan has a somewhat chequered history. The census is one of the primary long-term planning tools and all developed and most developing states have a decennial census as a matter of routine. The first census was held after Independence in 1951, then in 1961, 1972, 1981 and 1998. It is now 17 years since the last census and the census scheduled for March 2016 has been delayed principally for security as well as political considerations but a new date has now been fixed — March 2017. As per the 1998 census, the population of Pakistan was 130,857,717. With the inclusion of the population of AJK and Gilgit-Baltistan, the population was 134,714,017.

The population over the last 17 years has not only grown, it has become much more mobile as the cities expanded, patterns of work and life changed and the country became more urbanised — though just how urbanised nobody knows for sure. Neither is there any clarity about just how many houses there are — houses, not households — a number that is important as it indicates how many houses are needed for the population counted by the census. Thus it is that it has been decided that a house count will be conducted in parallel with a head-count.

We warmly welcome the decision of the Council of Common Interests in their decision on Friday 16^th December to begin the 6^th census next 15^th March. We also note that it took some arm-twisting by the apex judiciary to persuade the powers-that-be to conduct what ought to be a routine exercise. The Supreme Court had taken Suo Moto notice of the delay and ordered that the census be carried out as detailed above. There is to be close coordination between the provincial governments, which is also a welcome development given the inter-provincial frictions. To quote an old adage — there is many a slip ‘twixt cup and lip. Slippery as governments are when faced by difficult decisions a further delay for whatever reason is a possibility, but we wish a fair wind to this essential exercise.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 18^th, 2016.

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