More than a count: insights from Pakistan’s first digital census

KARACHI:

For the past year and a half, Pakistan has been in the midst of turmoil with no end in sight. Our economy, despite the government’s vociferous assurances teeters on the brink of default. Compounded by political instability and deteriorating law and order, the challenges our nation currently faces have not only impeded the core functions of the state but have brought any hopes of betterment for the common citizen through economic growth and development to a virtual standstill.

It was against this backdrop that the government conducted an exercise crucial for the effective running of any democratic system. After a delay of one month, the 2023 Housing and Population Census was carried out in March, with a significant technological twist. The headcount, for the first time in Pakistan’s history, relied on a digital approach with the aim of making the process more efficient and accessible to Pakistanis, and revolutionising the way the data is collected. The result was the implementation of the Digital Census Self-Enumeration Portal, which was made available to the public from February 20 to March 3.

According to the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS), which conducts the census, citizens could register their family and home details by themselves at the portal using a registered mobile device. A door-to-door digital count was then conducted between March 1 and April 1 to verify the information citizens who used the portal had recorded and to count those who did not self-enumerate.

But even as it marked a huge step forward for the nation, the decision to conduct the census digitally has not been without hurdles. The previous government had given a go-ahead for the headcount as far back as October 2021, with the exercise originally scheduled for the same month the following year. But its ouster following a vote of no-confidence allowed the date to be pushed to February this year, with the PBS required to submit its data on April 30.

The PBS then delayed the headcount once more to March, reportedly for both political and procedural reasons, with the incumbent government appearing to benefit as it provided justifiable grounds to continue its tenure until August this year amid the legal challenges it faced. Ensuring the count was carried out within the stipulated timeline was also contingent upon the availability of around Rs22 billion at a time the country’s economy is trapped in a negative spiral.

The enumeration concluded throughout the country on May 22 and the preliminary results were announced a day later. The total population of Pakistan (including the Islamabad Capital Territory, but excluding Gilgit-Baltistan and Azad Jammu and Kashmir) came out to be nearly 250 million – 249,566,743 to be exact.

In Pakistan, a census is supposed to be carried out every ten years so that elections and government policies and planning can better reflect demographical changes our ever-growing populous nation has gone through. For one reason or another, the exercise has been subjected to fits and starts. The last census was conducted just six years ago in 2017, although the results were challenged and made controversial by various political quarters. The 2017 exercise was carried out 19 years after the last one in 1998, which too took place 18 years after the one before.

Although the digital approach this time around marked a significant development, it has attracted its set of controversies too with several stakeholders concerned whether the final detailed population breakdown will reflect an accurate demographic picture of the country. As we wait, The Express Tribune sought insights on the exercise from across the country to make better sense of the positives and negatives.

Demystifying the digital approach

Speaking to The Express Tribune, the PBS director for Sindh Munawar Ali Ghangro explained why the seventh national census of the country was carried out so quickly after the last one. “When the Council of Common Interests released the results of the 2017 census, it did so on the condition that a fresh headcount was be carried out before the next general elections,” he recalled.

Discussing how digital tools ended up being relied upon for the 2023 census, Ghangro shared that that in the year-and-a-half since they received the directives for a new headcount, the PBS planned the exercise around new technologies and techniques. “This year, thus, marked the first-ever digital census and we are still processing the results.”

The main idea of the huge exercise of conducting a housing and population census is the development of policy and planning with the extensive data collected. The federal government arranges and make all the decisions, while provinces manage the operational end, or in other words the technical and financial support is provided by the federal government, while human resource and operations are done by the provinces.

The senior PBS official from Sindh emphasised that such a large operation does not depend on just one department and its decisions. “Numerous resources from several departments are involved and [their officials are] assigned duties accordingly,” he said. “[For the 2023 census] the ground results were shared via dashboards and monitoring tools with assistant commissioners of districts in Sindh, Punjab, and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa who work as census district officers (CDOs). In AJK, G-B and Balochistan, the deputy commissioners plays the role of CDOs. In the eight cantonment areas of Sindh, the cantonment executive officers work as CDOs,” he said.

He added that the digital census was a leap forward for Pakistan and will contribute positively by revising and upgrading policies in the spheres of general elections and distribution of resources as per population count with reference to their province-wise geographical strength.

The census experience in Sindh

According to news reports, the National Database and Registration Authority (Nadra) had purchased all 126,000 tablets required for the exercise and had configured them with its software, to be used by as many as 121,000 individuals. “In just Karachi, around 10,000 resources were used to conduct the whole procedure. In the rest of Sindh, just 23,000 resources including monitors, administrators, enumerators and PBS staff were used,” shared Ghanghro.

For the household count, a team of two members went door-to-door with an enumerator and a police constable. Every five to six such teams reported to a supervisor. Data was collected in several categories that include, individual, household, house count, structure, units, and characteristics. The reason for these categories is that each building structure is not a house and each house does not have just one household, so several families residing together are counted in several categories.

“Due to self-enumeration, the burden of the workforce was decreased, and self-credibility developed among people as they felt more confident that the data cannot be tampered with or changed in the digital system,” Ghangro said. He added that despite the self-enumeration, field workers went to each household and re-checked the data.

The main reason for going door-to-door was that each structure was geo-tagged in the process, the senior PBS official said. According to him, the data collected is not just used for political purposes, but for planning and policy for development, education, energy and mining, foreign economic assistance, foreign trade, health, insurance, labour, manufacturing, money and credit, national accounts, population, public finance, social and culture, transport, and communications. “Every government department or area of function has their own concerns, purposes and perspective so they take the data accordingly,” said Ghangro. “Education pulls the data to see what would be the need for schools in the next five years, the health department to see whether more hospitals will be required and in what areas. If the elderly population is greater or if the youth population is greater in a certain area, then what development projects can be looked at. So each department plans and uses the data as per their need and requirement.”

Sharing preliminary results from the recent census, Ghangro said that data gathered until May 22 puts the total population of Sindh at 57.9 million, with Karachi accounting for 19.1 million. “These numbers have a margin of 100,000 to 200,000 individuals, as the data gathering is still in process. The individual counted includes anyone who has been living in their city of current residence for the last six months or is planning to live in that city for the next six months. It does not exclude anyone merely on the basis of domicile or permanent address,” he said.

This census will entail a lot of political consideration and that too on the parameters of urban-rural divide. Karachi has officially expressed its reservations on the previous census. For instance, the Karachi leadership of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan and Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan expressed reservations that the delimitation and constituency divisions were not done right, which is why local government elections have been in favour of the current provincial government run by Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP). Likewise the displacement saga in the tribal areas and settled areas of K-P and Punjab will also be up for a litmus test.

Sources from Upper Sindh suggested some disputes over the final number in the region. According to one teacher, who like many others, was utilised in census teams, the Sindh government allegedly expressed concern over the low numbers from the region when the exercise concluded on April 4. “So, we were asked to revisit all the blocks we had previously been to and increase the number of people and houses we had counted,” the teacher, who spoke on condition of anonymity, claimed. “This process took another month to complete.

According to another source, the political families of Sukkur held a meeting in which it was decided to increase the number of houses and population to increase the seats of national and provincial assemblies in the city. At present, there are two National Assembly and four provincial assembly seats in Sukkur. The source alleged that Sukkur’s influentials want to take that number to three and six, respectively. That said, thousands of Sukkur residents have moved to housing societies on the outskirts of the city, reducing the population of the city centre.

Reports from other cities, towns, and villages in Sindh also suggested similar practices with regards to ‘low’ numbers, especially in the rural areas of Khairpur and Naushehro Feroze districts, the population of which was badly impacted by last year’s floods and torrential rains. Some sources from these districts alleged that census teams counted houses that never even existed. Where digital devices were provided, the procedure was reportedly carried out properly, sources said. However, the census in certain areas could only be conducted the traditional way, they said.

Decrease in Punjab?

The results of the country’s first digital census place the count for Punjab at 116.8 million, according to the PBS, which accounts for a little less than half of Pakistan’s total population. The results, however, have drawn concern from both political parties and citizens, who believe the numbers will be manipulated to reshape constituencies for the next elections.

Syed Waleed Ahmed, a resident of Baghbanpura, Lahore, shared that he and his two brothers live in the same house with their mother. All three brothers are married, and they have separate portions in the house. Waleed Ahmed mentioned that on the day the census team visited their house, they provided all the information on a simple piece of paper. When they asked the census team why they were not doing online entry since the government provided tablets, they were told that they would do this work sitting at home.

Similar statements were given by Azmi Khan, Robina Ahmed, and Aisha Amer, who are residents of a renowned society in Lahore. These women said that the census team did not collect much information from them. They were asked about their educational background, and their ages were roughly written on a simple piece of paper. They stated that it seems like the field staff of the census might have been instructed not to enter data in real time. Aisha Amer told that she filled out her own survey form online and provided the code to the survey team, but she does not know if the team used that code.

Azhar Khalid, a political analyst and human rights commissioner, stated in an interview with The Express Tribune that there were several flaws in the digital census. He mentioned that he had long meetings with the census team, and he told them that he had shifted his current residence to another block in the society after some time. However, the team did not reflect the change of residence in their data.

Khalid claimed such tactics were used deliberately to increase the vote bank of specific political parties in Punjab's electoral constituencies and reduce the vote count of opponents. The members of a single family have been counted as one in different areas. He said that these results will undoubtedly be used in the upcoming elections' constituency demarcations. He added that the decreased population ratio in Punjab and its impact on the seats in the National Assembly is a clear example of how the digital census has been politically exploited.

Skepticism in Balochistan and K-P?

For a province where a sizeable number of people are deprived of any form of Internet services, the digital census posed a question mark in itself. Among factors that make the reported results vague, first and foremost was a drastic 56 per cent rise from the 12.3 million people counted in the province just six years ago. Claims by locals that entries by census teams in Balochistan were recorded manually rather than digitally, observers wondered about the possibility of political maneuvering influencing the numbers as political hopefuls seek to reshape constituencies to their advantage.

“They [census staff] were not carrying any gadgets to make our entries digitally. They just had a pen and paper,” said Rasheed, a resident of Quetta’s Shehbaz Town who wondered why call it was called a digital census at all. Chalo Bawri resident Manzoor encountered discrepancies despite using the digital portal: “The team recorded our entries manually but when we checked the digital data, my name and my wife’s name wasn’t present,” he said.

There have been complaints that the staff which was hired was neither trained nor equipped with the gadgets which were required for the digital process. Imran, a resident of Qambrani Road said that “Only our house was marked in the recent census but no one came in the house to conduct the proper process of the census at all.”

Similar concerns were raised by residents in K-P. Waris Shah a student of the Statistics Department of the University of Peshawar said that although the PBS involved teachers to carry out the digital census, most of them did not know the digital approach and there were chances that the wrong figures could have been added. “In the area where I am living in, no one came to ask for the census. Although an online form was available, most of the people in villages did not know how to fill these forms,” he shared. Criticising the current method, he suggested the PBS would have been better served by recruiting staff on a permanent basis and training them specifically for the digital approach.

A PBS official from K-P, speaking on condition of anonymity, shared that the headcount had only been 90 per cent completed in the province. “In areas which were snowed in or where the law and order situation isn’t good, we will start the census exercise soon,” he said. He added that the PBS is committed to completing the digital census before October and if some areas, for any reason, remain inaccessible, an approximate number will be calculated to complete the exercise, a practice he claimed other countries use as well.

 

Official response

Qaiser Sharif, the central spokesperson of Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan, told The Express Tribune that there are concerns about the census across the country, and we reject it. “Despite the increase in population in Punjab, K-P, and Karachi, it is an injustice to not present the accurate number of population by the PBS. The people have lost trust in them,” he said. “It is evident that the census process has not been completed properly. No team has reached many areas and districts regarding the census. The government should announce additional days to complete the census process immediately and include those areas and districts where counting has not been conducted so that concerns about the census can be addressed,” Sharif added.

However, according to Ghangro, the PBS director for Sindh, despite the fact that political parties mostly prefer to blame the political scenario for the delay in census, it can actually be due to several reasons. “At times, it could be the government’s unwillingness or no plan or intention to run a census, lack of financial resources, lack of correct political environment or political unrest, weather conditions and lack of adequate human resources,” he said. “In some areas the education department which is a major human resource required in these procedures could be busy conducting exams or some other project, and if they are not available, a delay is caused,” he added.

Despite repeated attempts, neither the chief statistician of the PBS nor the PBS spokesperson for K-P was available for comments.

The last census in 2017 marked the national population at 207.68 million, with the expressed assumption error of -0.043%. Likewise, the population growth rate was projected at 2.40%, and it estimated that the national count would be well over 225 million to this day. Anyway, the digital census will act as a genuine barometer and jot down statistically the scope of displacement over the period of years, as well as the age grouping in which the nation is in today. An immediate application of the census will rest on the Election Commission, which is constitutionally bound to delimit the electoral constituencies as per results, and at the same time the federal cabinet upgrading disbursement of funds and receipts under the ECC and CCI nomenclatures.

 

(WITH ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY OUR CORRESPONDENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS IN LAHORE, PESHAWAR, QUETTA AND SUKKUR)