If the latest census figures are any guide, the answer to that question is a resounding ‘no’, because a big majority of Pakistanis (about 64%) still live in the rural areas. According to provisional results of 6th population census, the share of urban population in Pakistan rose less than 4 percentage points between 1998 and 2017. Urban population is now counted at 36.4 percent of the total down from an estimated 40.5 percent quoted in the Economic Survey 2017. So much for the story of rising urbanization and the ensuing consumer appetite that the country’s economic managers sell at investment road shows abroad!
This problem, as this column flagged previously, is not surprising, the roots of which lie in definitions (See BR Research column “The great count” published March 15, 2017). The PBS uses the administrative definition of the urban areas as defined under law by the provincial/local governments. In contrast, most economists agree that urbanity has to be defined by the “urban characteristics” of an area such as common utilities, roads, sanitation, schools, centers for trade and commerce and health, with a substantially non-agricultural population and high literacy rate.
The definition for urban followed by the PBS in 2017, as was the case in 1998, is one where a municipal corporation, a town committee or a cantonment board are administratively classified as urban. The adoption of this crude definition for the purpose of census is a step back from 1951 and 1961 census when certain areas of ‘urban characteristics’ were duly classified as urban.
Nineteen years since the last census there is no doubt that urbanisation in the context of ‘urban characteristics’ has grown phenomenally in the country. In his defence, Asif Bajwa, the Chief Census Commissioner told BR Research that it not his job to get the definition right.
“It is not my mandate to declare which area is rural or urban. According to the law, it is the mandate of the provincial and local governments to identify which area is urban and which is rural. As a person in charge of census, I can only use official classifications of urban and rural as reported by provincial and local governments,” he told BR Research in an interview published March 17, 2017.
But that seems to be a weak defence on account of Bajwa, and also his former boss Ishaq Dar, who had also held the portfolio for statistics until a few months ago. Being at the centre, Dar could have at least flagged the matter enough at the CCI to sort out the definition issue. The failure to do so is a bad move on the part of those who boast a “business friendly” government.
Imagine Dar or his colleagues from the Board of Investment or some leading business delegation from Pakistan makes an elevator pitch at a conference that ‘Pakistan has a ballooning urban population’. Now imagine someone raising a hand from the audience saying ‘ummm, you got that wrong mister, 64 percent your people live in the countryside”.
Ergo, the investor community would do well to pick up on this issue, whereas the federal government should call in a CCI moot and work out their urban-rural definitions.
As for the overall census figure, at 207 million, the 2017 census has beaten previous estimates for country’s total population. The highest estimate for 2017 was by National Institute of Population Sciences that had forecast a population of 200 million; Economic Survey 2017 had the figure of 199 million whereas UN’s population division’s 2017 forecast for Pakistan were 196.7 million.
Academic critics from an array of institutions say that even at 207 million the total population has been underestimated. This column is not privy to detailed census datasets, and would avoid commenting on the credibility of the total count, though a countrywide count of barely 10000 transgender people does raise credibility concerns over the 2017 count. Anyway, the population growth rate of 2.40 percent begs two questions.
First, what was the basis on which Economic Survey was consistently reporting a decline in population growth rates; just in the last three surveys, the growth rate had tapered off from 1.92 in 2015 to 1.86 in 2017, whereas the current growth rate is even higher than 2.17 percent growth reported at the time of 1998 census. Second, how is it that most bilateral and multilateral funded programmes and their local development partners in Pakistan have been congratulating each other for falling fertility rates, when in fact the growth rate suggests otherwise.
The development community’s contraceptive lobby that is bent on selling contraceptive as the panacea of sorts would do well to realize that contraception isn’t the answer. What are needed instead are campaigns to change preferences to drive fertility lower, instead of making most bets on contraceptives. Keep in mind that some key people from the census monitoring team are from the ‘contraceptive lobby’ who have been working on projects that have claimed success in reducing fertility rates.
Karachi factor
While Karachi’s population figures haven’t been made officially public as yet, two different media reports suggest an unusually low numbers of 14.91 million and 16 million, whereas Lahore’s population has been reported at 11.1 million.
Considering that Lahore’s population was 5.1 million and Karachi’s was 9.3 million in 1998, how could be possible both Karachi and Lahore attracted nearly same number (~5 million) of people between 1998 and 2017. Anyone who knows Karachi will be baffled by these numbers.
Another way to look at Karachi’s population is its share in total urban population. Is it not strange that Karachi’s population as share of the country’s total urban population has fallen or remained unchanged depending on which media report is to be believed?
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