Seventh census

The Council of Common Interests (CCI) has decided that the seventh population and housing census in the country will take place by the end of this year. The CCI has also established a census monitoring committee to monitor and ‘oversee’ census activities. This will hopefully ensure credible and expeditious census operations. The CCI is a constitutional body that plays a significant role in matters concerning the federation and common issues that federating units need to discuss. All chief ministers and the prime ministers attended the meeting and reached a much-needed consensus on this issue. The next census will also use some latest technologies and infrastructure to ensure smooth running of the census activities. The Census Advisory Committee had recommended that the government adopt international best practices. The use of digital technology and GIS systems has become a common practice around the world for census operations.

The first step will be to conduct a housing census for which the GIS system can play a crucial role in locating exact housing coordinates and thus eliminating any chance of inaccurate data submission. That will be followed by a population census that will require state-of-the-art database management to minimise data manipulation. Keeping in view the previous census which had generated several controversies, a more credible exercise is needed this time around. The credibility of census data is perhaps the most significant factor that contributes to the success or failure of any census. All major decisions for development purposes or for the welfare of the people depend on appropriate policies that in turn derive their strength from indisputable census data. If the census data become a bone of contention among the federating units, policymaking itself becomes a controversial exercise. For any government to initiate projects and allocate resources, a regular census provides a baseline from which all ministries extract their relevant data.

Now that an independent CCI Secretariat has come into existence with a budget of over 110 million rupees, we hope there will be better coordination between the federal and provincial governments. This is also likely to have a direct positive impact on the census and hopefully will be able to rectify any complaints that may arise over the course of the upcoming census. This is going to be a huge exercise as the population of Pakistan is projected at 227 million, making it the fifth largest country in terms of population. Only China, India,the USA, and Indonesia can claim to have a bigger census exercise than Pakistan. That is one reason we need utmost careful census conduct in 2022. Timely completion of the next census becomes even more crucial as the next general elections are due in 2023 and any delay will create even more problems for the Election Commission of Pakistan.