Key takeaways from census results

So we are 207+ million in number, up from 132+ million back in 1998. If we keep on growing like this, we’ll be the third-largest country in the world by 2050 with 450+ million humans, behind India and China. This growth rate is outrageous. For the last 19 years, we have been adding one person to our population every eight seconds. Add in the number of deaths and we realise that we have been reproducing at a much faster pace. Population control programmes, which have consumed billions, need serious soul-searching. Even more interestingly, these results have taken many by surprise. The World Bank and UNFPA thought we should be somewhere close to 197 million, but we are off by about 10 million people. Surprisingly, the CCI projected us at somewhere near 205 million, an estimate far better than that of the development experts.

Secondly and more importantly, where have these people come from? Excluding Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT), the population growth has been highest in Balochistan, followed by Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P). This is no surprise, as Balochistan and K-P have a much higher poverty incidence than Punjab and Sindh. Poverty and population growth have long been known to coexist and often nurture each other. On the other hand, the lowest population growth (1.81%) was witnessed in rural Punjab, but urbanisation might have had a greater role to play here.

Thirdly, the change in provincial population shares is perhaps the most consequential issue. If there were 100 people in Pakistan, 15 of them would be living in K-P, two in Fata, 53 in Punjab, 23 in Sindh, six in Balochistan and one in ICT. In 1998, K-P had 13, Punjab 56 while Balochistan had five (out of 100). The rest had the same proportion. This change will have important repercussions about distribution of resources and allocation of national assembly seats. The next NFC award will have to be announced, with Punjab compromising in favour of K-P and Balochistan. Similarly, Article 51(3) of the Constitution will have to be amended, in the light of Article 51(5), which mandates the allocation of seats based on the basis of population in accordance with the last preceding census officially published. This would mean at least eight fewer seats for Punjab in 332-strong National Assembly, with 5-6 more seats for K-P and almost three more for Balochistan.



Next comes the male-to-female ratio. Using the 100 people analogy, we would have 51 males and 49 females, which is very close to world’s average. This has, however, come down since 1998, when we had 52 men out of every 100 people. This change could be a result of widening gap between female and male life expectancy at birth, which currently stands at almost two years.

Another upsetting aspect of these results relates to productivity. According to the World Bank data, Pakistan ranked 126^th out of 175 countries in 2016 based on GDP per capita, a measure of the country’s workforce productivity. Even if our GDP grows by 5% this year, our GDP per capita in 2017 would only be as high as we claimed to have in 2015. We knew we were unproductive, but it’s worse than we thought.

The most striking number from census results is the transgender population. While the government must be given credit to acknowledge the so far ignored transgender population, the number looks far too small. The population of 10,418 translates into one transgender person for every 20,000 people. In India, there is one for every 2,600 individuals, with a clear realisation that the actual number may be six to seven times higher. This means that there could actually be one transgender person for every 400 citizens. Our demographics can’t be that different. Even if we assume 1/2,600 ratio, it means that we have identified only one out of every eight transgender persons in Pakistan. Considering this huge anomaly, it is critical that any policy measure to support transgender needs should not be based on these modest estimates.

Lastly, comes the urban-rural split. About 64 people out of every 100 live in rural areas, while 36 reside in urban settlements. The latter, however, may grow to 40 by 2050 with existing growth rates. We have added 30 million people to our urban population in the last 19 years and we are all set to add another 112 million by 2050, if we continue unabated. This unfortunately is not a result of any coherent strategy, which means that we are not well prepared to face this challenge neither do we have any mechanisms to reap its dividends.

Urbanisation and its associated issues are likely to force their way onto policy makers’ radar in the near future or else the population pressure is going to wipe out whatever semblance of service delivery and public order remains. Merely feeding these 450 million souls would be a nightmare, let alone educating them, providing them health services or catering to their electricity, transport and water requirements. These preliminary census results should be an eye-opener for policymakers to have a paradigm shift. We are facing an emergency and we need to attend to it now or else we are going to witness a crisis of unprecedented proportions in not very distant future.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 29^th, 2017.

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