Making sense of the census
A census is for the organised states, not subject to no-go areas, ‘ungoverned spaces’, and terrorism.
The sixth population census of Pakistan is under way. The Statistics Division of Pakistan (SDP) began its work on April 5, and we hope that it has studied the problems it had faced during the rather chaotic work it had done in 1998, the last time we held our national headcount. Complaints and warnings have already started pouring in from linguistic-ethnic-religious communities fearing undercounting. In Karachi, the ANP and the Jamaat-i-Islami have already registered their caveats. Fears that old mistakes could be repeated are not misplaced. For now, it is just the house-count, which will finish on April 19; the headcount will start on October 6. The cost: Rs5 billion.
A census is for the organised states, not for states thin at the seams and subject to no-go areas, ‘ungoverned spaces’ and terrorism. The gigantic task will involve teams conducting the survey in 25 divisions, 139 districts, 424 census districts, 533 tehsils, 62 towns, 1,470 urban union councils, 50,612 villages, 6,055 rural union councils, 62 towns of the city districts, 174 municipal committees, 286 town committees and 43 cantonments. A total of 146,270 enumerators, all teachers, have spread to find out what the population is today and in how many category it falls. In 1998, it was 132 million and the guesstimate today is that it will be over 175 million.
The census is funny because of the way it has been looked at. The subaltern studies of the British Raj blame communalism on the census which separated people on the basis of religion, which the government used to ‘divide and rule’. Yet knowing the nature of the population is essential to target the country’s economic development efficiently. Today in Pakistan, there are communities that fear undercounting — Rasool Baksh Palijo’s Awami Tehreek has already warned that Sindhi households are being undercounted — while there are also those like the Ahmadis who don’t want to be counted for fear of being attacked. And those of them who want to own up will have to sign an insulting affidavit anyway. The Baloch fear undercounting in Balochistan, while the Pakhtuns of Balochistan fear that their majority there will be made to shrink. When the division of federal revenues was done on the basis of population, there was a general tendency to over-count till the census itself became bogus.
Some statistics are avoided because of the guilt the state feels about certain evils it cannot prevent. One such example that comes to mind — and we mention this at the risk of sounding controversial — is the division of the Muslim majority according to various sects. Whether this should be done is something for the government to decide but one cannot ignore the fact that the proportion of say Shias in the population varies from between 10 to 30 per cent, depending on which sect is being asked. The census will not count them for the same reason that cropped up in subaltern studies.
Christians are especially irked by undercounting. They say they were 3.5 per cent of the population in 1947 and the reserved seats given them in parliament were 10; today they estimate, quite fairly, that they must be 10 million, but undercounting deprives them of the additional reserved seats. They want the staff of the missionary schools included among the census-takers to reflect the true spread of the community in the last 10 years. Hindus of Sindh fear that they too would be ignored during the house-count, especially as their Bheel and Kohli farm workers are nomadic and have left the Hindu-concentrated Thar region to find livelihood elsewhere because of the general famine-like conditions during the current economic crisis.
The country is in the clutches of forces that want to create chaos, and a census is a very important and key instrument to end this chaos because it is a powerful policy-forming and implementing guide for the government. Paramilitary personnel will be on hand and, if need be, the army will offer facilitation in areas under Taliban threat. But the counting must take place and should be done better than in 1998.
Published in The Express Tribune, April 12th, 2011.
A census is for the organised states, not for states thin at the seams and subject to no-go areas, ‘ungoverned spaces’ and terrorism. The gigantic task will involve teams conducting the survey in 25 divisions, 139 districts, 424 census districts, 533 tehsils, 62 towns, 1,470 urban union councils, 50,612 villages, 6,055 rural union councils, 62 towns of the city districts, 174 municipal committees, 286 town committees and 43 cantonments. A total of 146,270 enumerators, all teachers, have spread to find out what the population is today and in how many category it falls. In 1998, it was 132 million and the guesstimate today is that it will be over 175 million.
The census is funny because of the way it has been looked at. The subaltern studies of the British Raj blame communalism on the census which separated people on the basis of religion, which the government used to ‘divide and rule’. Yet knowing the nature of the population is essential to target the country’s economic development efficiently. Today in Pakistan, there are communities that fear undercounting — Rasool Baksh Palijo’s Awami Tehreek has already warned that Sindhi households are being undercounted — while there are also those like the Ahmadis who don’t want to be counted for fear of being attacked. And those of them who want to own up will have to sign an insulting affidavit anyway. The Baloch fear undercounting in Balochistan, while the Pakhtuns of Balochistan fear that their majority there will be made to shrink. When the division of federal revenues was done on the basis of population, there was a general tendency to over-count till the census itself became bogus.
Some statistics are avoided because of the guilt the state feels about certain evils it cannot prevent. One such example that comes to mind — and we mention this at the risk of sounding controversial — is the division of the Muslim majority according to various sects. Whether this should be done is something for the government to decide but one cannot ignore the fact that the proportion of say Shias in the population varies from between 10 to 30 per cent, depending on which sect is being asked. The census will not count them for the same reason that cropped up in subaltern studies.
Christians are especially irked by undercounting. They say they were 3.5 per cent of the population in 1947 and the reserved seats given them in parliament were 10; today they estimate, quite fairly, that they must be 10 million, but undercounting deprives them of the additional reserved seats. They want the staff of the missionary schools included among the census-takers to reflect the true spread of the community in the last 10 years. Hindus of Sindh fear that they too would be ignored during the house-count, especially as their Bheel and Kohli farm workers are nomadic and have left the Hindu-concentrated Thar region to find livelihood elsewhere because of the general famine-like conditions during the current economic crisis.
The country is in the clutches of forces that want to create chaos, and a census is a very important and key instrument to end this chaos because it is a powerful policy-forming and implementing guide for the government. Paramilitary personnel will be on hand and, if need be, the army will offer facilitation in areas under Taliban threat. But the counting must take place and should be done better than in 1998.
Published in The Express Tribune, April 12th, 2011.