This is apropos a Business Recorder news item "Senate informed: Government wants to hold population census in March" carried by the newspaper yesterday. According to it, the government informed the Senate that it intends to conduct census in March 2017, as its earlier plan to hold the population census in November-December 2016 could not be materialised due to unavailability of military personnel.
Responding to a motion by Senator Mohsin Aziz of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf to discuss the delay n conducting census, the Minister for Law and Justice Zahid Hamid said that the census could not take place in November-December as the military is still busy at the eastern border.
How unfortunate it is that the government cannot conduct a fair and transparent census of population in the absence of army troops. This speaks volumes about our successive governments' inability to make arrangements - with or without troops - to carry out a fair and transparent census of population of the country. It is an established fact that no effective and meaningful economic policymaking take place in the absence of genuinely required census figures.