Census delayed

The promised timeline of April 2016 to begin conducting a census of the country after an 18-year delay is over. A week ago, a meeting of the Council of Common Interests (CCI) decided to delay the census. With all four chief ministers present at the meeting, the only surprise was how little resistance they put up at the government’s proposal of a delay. Looking at how the federal government went about the matter, there was little that suggested that the government was ever serious about meeting the deadline in the first place. Staffing issues at the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) were never sorted and funds required to prepare for the census were not released in time. The result was that there was no surprise when the government announced that it was going to delay the population census in the country for an ‘indefinite’ period. The earliest time when the census can be held now is in September this year, but no commitment has been made to that effect yet. The reason cited is that at least around 300,000 troops were needed to give credibility and provide security to the census. They were simply not available with the army busy with Operation Zarb-e-Azb. The smaller provinces did not agree on a phased-census, which has conveniently not been elaborated on, and so the meeting concluded that delaying the census would be the better course of action.

The situation leaves us with little to look forward to. The government has admitted it cannot conduct something as seemingly normal as a census. The number of troops the government is asking for is mind-boggling. This is far more than even the number of troops one would require to deal with a civil war. Do the government and other security agencies feel that conducting a census is akin to declaring war on the people of the country? Sanity should have prevailed, and the requirement of troops could have been restricted to specific problem areas instead of all across the country. The failure of governance is staring us in the face if a simple population census in the country cannot be carried out without the army providing security. This should force us to ask tougher questions. Are civilian law-enforcement agencies this incapable? If so, why is nothing being done to undertake structural reforms there? Conducting a census is a political decision that requires the will of the government. Even if there are reasons to delay it, the inability to come up with a new date suggests that more delays may be on the cards. Clearly, the war against terrorism will not be over by the end of this year. The government seems to be hiding behind the wrong excuse to refuse to meet its constitutional obligation. While the promised protests from opposition parties against the census delay did not see light of day, we are left with a much more serious question. How can Pakistan be ready to plan for its future with statistics that are two decades old? The simple answer is that it can’t. The government obviously prefers it remain this way. This is just petty politics of vested interests.