Picture of Pakistan

With Pakistan’s first census  in 19 years    scheduled to commence in little over a month, the government has been finalising the rules for this often fraught process. Among its more significant decisions is a rule that expat Pakistanis who have been out of the country for more than six months will not be included in the census. This would make sense if the census was meant only to be a population count. But the census is also used by academics and having a concrete number of how many Pakistanis – estimated to be seven million – live overseas could be useful for research purposes. The census figures are also used to apportion parliamentary seats and many of the overseas Pakistanis, such as labourers and students, are only out of the country temporarily. Including them would give a more realistic picture of the population breakdown. Much of the opposition to the census comes from arguments over who should and shouldn’t be counted. In Balochistan, the National Party and other political parties dominated by ethnic Baloch want the census to be delayed till all Afghan refugees are sent back. Since the refugees are primarily Pakhtun and have settled in parts of the province where other Pakhtuns already live, the Baloch fear this will reduce their share of the seats in Balochistan.

The government, to its credit, has insisted that all Afghan refugees who possess valid identification will be counted in the census. But another option would be to count all refugees regardless of the documentation they possess, to get an accurate count of how many refugees there are in the country and thus to better tailor services to help them. The necessity of providing valid identification will not only be a problem for Afghan refugees. It is likely that each person counted in the census will have to provide valid identification. In Sindh, more than 30 percent of the population does not have a CNIC. This should not lead to them being discounted from the census since those without identification will be heavily skewed towards rural areas. That, in turn, could give urban Sindh greater weightage when provincial and National Assembly seats are apportioned. The census needs to be as inclusive and comprehensive as possible. The courts have tried to do that, for example by ordering the government to include a transgender option. The government should operate in that spirit to make the census an accurate snapshot of the Pakistan we live in.