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Friday March 29, 2024

Importance of national census highlighted

KarachiA national census is the sum of the country’s economy and indicates not only the current trends and figures of population but also projects trends for the future which could help rulers plan national activity accordingly.These views were expressed by Dr Farhat Yusuf, a demographer of Pakistani origin, who is

By Anil Datta
March 25, 2015
Karachi
A national census is the sum of the country’s economy and indicates not only the current trends and figures of population but also projects trends for the future which could help rulers plan national activity accordingly.
These views were expressed by Dr Farhat Yusuf, a demographer of Pakistani origin, who is visiting from Australia, while addressing a select group of journalists at the Karachi Press Club on Tuesday evening
Dr Yusuf is currently teaching at the Australian National University and is the professor emeritus at the University of Macquarie, Sydney, Australia.
Census, he said, was a periodic activity and must be conducted regularly, and should never be missed out on.
In the US and the UK, he said, it was a five-yearly activity while in Australia it was annual.
“Unfortunately, there has been no census in Pakistan after 1998. The demographic conditions in so many localities have changed over the last 17 years and the figures just do not hold good right now. How could the rulers be enabled to make accurate assessments in their plans for the future when the figures they’re working on have gone redundant?” said Yusuf.
In reply to a question, Yusuf doubted the authenticity of the current population figures projected by the official departments.
He said that the practice of census started in the subcontinent in 1881 and was held every 10 years. He says India continued with the practice which stood them in good stead.
“Often a census is evaded by some countries because of political considerations,” he said, and cited the example of Lebanon because, he said, the Lebanese population was almost equally divided between Muslims and Christians, so much so that if the president was a Muslim, the prime minister was a Christian, and vice versa.. So a census was evaded so as not to kick up any controversy. Even in Pakistan, he suspected, census was evaded on account of political considerations.
People, Yusuf said, must be duly informed about the indispensable importance of a census in national life.
He said that in Australia, getting every child born registered was a must. He could not be admitted to a school, he could not get married, and he couldn’t get a funeral at the end of his earthly tenure without being registered.
He highlighted the role of modern technology like computers and the internet in the census activity and said that modern technology had made the task of arriving at accurate results much simpler.
He cited the case of a friend who remarked to him, “Why so much of stress on infrastructure? Why not for welfare-oriented activity which is the prime responsibility of the rulers?”
He said that one of the reasons for this was that we didn’t know how many children there were and how many there would be five years hence. Similarly, we could not gauge the currently prevailing number of patients of a certain disease and, given the measure taken, how many there would be five years hence; hence the lack of planning.
As for Australia, he said, there were over 500,000Muslims in Australia and that they outnumbered the aborigines. He said that contrary to the belief in certain circles, the Australians, by and large, were a very tolerant society and not at all racist.
He said that there was a time when the overwhelming number of immigrants to Australia was from the British Isles but not anymore. The largest number of immigrants pouring currently into Australia was from India.
Dr Yusuf was the recipient of the Australia National Day Award in January 2015.
Apart from Australia, he has taught at the City and Southampton universities in the UK, Princeton and Cornell universities in the US, the Punjab University in Lahore, and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.