Since it is difficult to hold a fair census in Balochistan, the province should be spared from the count
ISLAMABAD: The Council of Common Interests (CII) consented and preparations were made for a housing and population census. The military is providing security for the field teams along with other law-enforcement agencies.
Balochistan is almost half of Pakistan and there is no concept of planning and development or using the census data for any welfare programme. Half of Pakistan remains underdeveloped and discriminated against. At the end of the fiscal year, it was found that the federal government spent half of the budget. There was a classic case when the federal government wanted to construct a youth hostel in Quetta at a modest cost of Rs80 million. The construction took 12 years as the federal government made an allocation of a couple of millions on a yearly basis. In the original plan, the youth hostel should have been constructed within three years. It is unfortunate that Balochistan might suffer the most in terms of resource allocation as the census might count the Afghan refugees residing in the province as citizens. This will mean that the Baloch will have to compete with the refugees for seats in institutions, government offices and other spheres of life. In a decade or so, over one million Baloch population had migrated to Sindh and other areas as internally displaced persons and families due to instability in different areas of the province. The Balochistan National Party-M has decided that it will not accept the census in the present circumstance out of fear that the exercise would turn the Baloch population into a minority in their own province.
Since it is difficult to hold a fair census in Balochistan, the province should be spared from the count as the Baloch people are not expecting a lion’s share from the federal pool of resources nor any big change in parliamentary representation.
Jakkaran Musa
Published in The Express Tribune, March 23rd, 2017.
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