Census woes and vows

The most remarkable thing about the latest census is that it has, at long last, been held. Thanks to judicial activism, supported on the ground by the deployment of the jawans of the army and the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics led by Asif Bajwa, we now know how many we are, men and women, in urban and rural areas, and in provinces and districts. This is useful information for a government interested in public welfare. However, the only positive role of the federal government is that it did not stand in the way of releasing the census data.

The Punjab government and the political parties with the main bases in Punjab also deserve credit for not making any noise about the reduced share of the province’s population in the national total, despite the fact that the 7^th NFC award reduced the weight of population and now the proportion of population itself has decreased. There is also no celebration in that province of the relative success of its population programme.

But woe betide those responsible for increasing or not increasing enough of the population to the rest of the provinces! Sindh’s population share in the national total has stayed almost the same, leaving its share of resources and electoral constituencies unchanged. However, the significant reversal of rural-urban shares witnessed the urban-based parties vowing never to accept the census result that shows an increase far less than they perceived. And a woeful rural-based party vows to reject the census result for the opposite reason — the decrease in the proportion of the rural population. The battle of electoral constituencies and quotas is gripping the province. Even in the provinces experiencing an increased share in total population — Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan — the census woes and the vows against are no less common. In Balochistan, the Baloch-Pashtun balance has been disturbed by the perceived addition of the Afghans. In Khyber-Paktunkhwa, most concerns relate to Fata that seems to have been undercounted, mainly because of the difficulties related to the IDPs.

Sadly, while there is a lot of criticism by the political class about the under-enumeration of their constituents, the same class is virtually silent about the dismal demographic picture painted by the census results. Only a few months ago The Pakistan Economic Survey 2016-17 claimed: “A constant improvement in health and education indicators along with effective population welfare programs, the population growth is persistently declining. It was 1.92 in 2015 which declined to 1.89 in 2016 and 1.86 in 2017.” As we know now, the average annual growth of population since the last census has been much higher at 2.4 per cent. This makes a mockery of the claims made about the effectiveness of population, health and education programmes. Between the censuses of 1981 and 1998, the annual average growth rate of population was 2.7 per cent. In 19 years, there was a reduction of a mere 0.3 percentage point.

No census can be perfect. The latest census is no exception. However, just as the cure to democracy is more democracy, there is no alternative to a census. Suggestions for improvement are better left for the next round. It will be a good idea to hold the next one in 2021 to return to the historical ten-year cycle. In the meantime, the political class should tell us in their party manifestoes for the coming elections about the concrete plans they have to address the utter failure of the social sector in the intercensal period. Instead of the woes about undercounting, they should vow to ensure a better and timely census in future.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 9^th, 2017.

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