The great count

The population census beginning today comes at least nine years too late. It is also not without controversies such as the PBSs decision to do away with the Form 2A, since army personnel were available to the PBS for a short period of time, which resulted in the culling of the Form 2A. That form was supposed to be used to ask pertinent questions relating to disability, migration, fertility and unemployment.

But the die has been cast now. One can always do a post-mortem or what-if analysis with regards to Form 2A or with regards to other controversies such as the number of languages inquired or the way questions are framed, and what not. But one cannot change the whole form and the census exercise at the eleventh hour.

What can be done now is to put enough pressure on the government to ensure that the results of the census are at least accurate and complete. And that is not too much as for. It is as if asking for honesty in a confidential employee as Joseph Hill the American statistician famously said. No other qualities, however excellent, will compensate for the lack of accuracy and completeness in the census.

To that end a few things are important. The first of these is to ensure that the count is hundred percent; that the housing list is complete, and that the procedures are followed in toto. Second, as Dr. G.M. Arif, former joint director at PIDE maintains, is continued focus on clear and effective communication to ensure that the citizens respond positively to the enumerators.

Third, is the post enumeration survey. Unlike the censuses of 1972 and 1981 which had their follow on census evaluation surveys (CES) or post evaluation surveys (PES), no such survey was conducted for the 1998 census, which raised question marks over the reliability of the 1998 census. Therefore, the PBS ought to ensure that the PES is not delayed this time around.

Fourth, sooner or later the question of urban versus rural ought to be sorted out. It so happens that the PBS takes the administrative definition of the urban areas as defined under law by the provincial/local governments. In contrast, most scholars argue that urbanity has to be defined by the urban characteristics of an area such as common utilities, roads, sanitation, schools, centers of trade and commerce, with a substantially non-agricultural population and high literacy rate.

In Pakistan, areas with a municipal corporation, a town committee or a cantonment board are administratively classified as urban. And this is the urban definition currently being followed by the PBS, as was the case in 1998. While certain areas of urban characteristics were also classified as urban in 1951 and 1961 census, the 1998 census had resorted to the crude definition. This, according to a dated paper written by Dr Arif, had conservatively underestimated urban population by about 6.5 percent back then.

There little dispute that in the last 19 odd years, urbanisation in the context of urban characteristics has grown phenomenally in the country. Therefore, the provincial and federal governments would do well to sit together and work out their urban-rural definitions, and how the results of the ongoing census can be better analysed under the revised updated definitions.

Fifth, the dissemination of the census ought to be in a manner that is modern, transparent and meets the requirements of both academic/policy researchers as well as the media and civil society at large. Lastly, population census needs to become a routine operation along with other data generating functions. Dars long pending Charter of Economy initiative should include the population census.