More than just counting people
The Pakistan Bureau of Statistics has told a Senate Committee the census can be held anytime between September 2014 and March 2015. Realistically speaking there is little possibility of the exercise taking place anytime soon. The last national population count was conducted in 1998. To carry out the constitutional obligation of holding the decennial exercise, the next census should have been conducted in 2008. The PPP government tried to hold it in 2011 but the exercise had to be abandoned in midstream after the household census results were challenged in Sindh. The same year India conducted the census and the results were accepted without challenge.
A major purpose of the census is to prioritise socio-economic development in the country. In Pakistan the exercise has an added political significance because of the complexities of the country’s ethnic, multilingual and cultural composition. In Sindh each one of the three major communites, Sindhis, the Urdu speaking population and the Pushtuns suspects the census would be manipulated to keep it under-represented. The same situation exists in Punjab vis a vis the Punjabi and Seraiki communities. In KP the Hazaras compete with the Pushtuns in allocation of resources. In Balochistan the Baloch and Pushtun sections of population are fearful of being undercounted.
The census cannot be put on the backburner indefinitely. The planning commission has to know the exact number of people living in various provinces for a just distribution of resources. The Election Commission needs to know the correct demographic situation to redress the complaints of gerrymandering. Unless demographic realities are truly reflected in the number of constituencies this could raise questions about the transparency of the general election.
This poses a challenge for the PML-N government. The keenness to hold an early census indicated that Sharif was not sufficiently aware of the ethnic, cultural and linguistic complexities of the country. In India which faces similar issues the census could be conducted peacefully because of the presence of strong constitutional guarantees and institutional protection of the political, economic and cultural rights of people belonging to various groups. Does Sharif have the ability to fully comprehend the complex issues and make adequate and acceptable safeguards to holding the census? Unless this is done and a credible demographic count conducted the results of the next election in 2018 would remain suspect.
These schemes were approved in the 29th meeting of Provincial Development working party of current fiscal year 2013-14 presided over by the Punjab Planning and Development Board Chairman Irfan Elahi.
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