Tarek Youssaif February 1, 2007

Tags: census , NADRA , policy

Issues with the National Census

rel="tag" href="/tag/government">government had a lack of information about basic facts and figures within the country. Restricted from giving an account of even just the population itself and basic demographic data, the rulers were unable to offer as coherent account of where the country stood.

This is somewhat ironic given the fact that the primary requirement for democracy and non-autocratic rule is that basic population data exists to provide concrete statistics. If the country is unaware of how many people it is governing, and from which province, then how will it possibly be aware of how valid its representation is. If the singular most prominent virtue of democracy is that it allows for a connection between the rulers and the ruled, and provides an input for the ruled to correct their policies, then it stands to reason that the political powers should know, at the very least, who they are ruling.

Anita Weiss[2] notes that the 1998 census, was scheduled to be held in 1991, but postponed five separate times. Further, in an alarming observation, she identified seven areas why the democratic Governments did not wish to commission a census. These were (a) the ethnic composition of Baluchistan (the overspill of Afghanis into the province was a controversial issue – and there was a debate to what rights they would hold), (b) the growth rate of Karachi and whether the representation in Government and civil service matched its population strength, (c) whether the importance given to Punjab was merited and whether numerical manipulation from the remaining provinces would skew the results (d) the worry of feudal elites who would lose political strength if city populations were found to be on the rise, (e) the fear of sectarian disputes flaring up as Sunnis and Shias would dispute such statistics (each over-claiming their membership), (f) the idea that large population growth would be taken as an indicator that women were seen as chattel, demonstrating the Government’s unwillingness to tackle this, and g) the unwillingness to attend to the principle that resources would have to be committed to where there was a need for it, rather than at the whim of the administrator. A quick analysis of what Weiss is in effect claiming is that the Governments of the day did not wish to tailor their policies to the political realities of the day.

In December 2003 Shaukat Aziz[3] accepted the importance of the 1998 census as a vital tool for public policy making. This is food for thought. Given the previous precedents the administration could have rejected the census out of hand, clamoring that being commissioned under the Nawaz government, the census would never be free from his political bias. Not only did the Musharraf government accept the existing framework, it moved forward. NADRA was set up under the Musharraf regime in March 2000. By mid-2006 eighty million Pakistanis had been registered under its system[4]. Charged with the computerization of National Identity Cards, the introduction of e-passports and maintenance of electoral rolls it can be termed a Pakistani success. The next census has been set for 2008[5], and presuming that Mushurraf remains enthroned in power, will provide an interesting exercise in comparison to the previous decade.

Meanwhile, the Mushurraf regime has been collating a glut of information. It is worth investigating 3 areas for further examination:
1) The Madrassa registration
2) The Living Standards Survey
3) The Afghani refugee assessment

1) The Madrassa reforms have been in the pipeline for a while. In his January 12th 2002 speech, the President addressed concerns by promising to modulate and modernise the religious seminaries. This has not happened. The success of the Madrassa Registration and regulation ordinance 2002 is known to be limited. The vision he set out has, so far, been a failure[6]. Certainly the time-line by which complete reform was to occur (end of 2002) never materialised. However it must be conceded that a registration process has begun. To its credit this is the first register undertaken by Pakistan of these institutes. The National Education Census 2005 (NEC) showed a total of one and a half million students of these religious seminaries, two thirds of which were boys. There were approximate fifty five thousand teachers, 40% of those had not passed Metric. Just under thirteen thousand deeni madarris were counted in the country. Yet it took time for this audit to be delivered. After three years, on 25th February 2005 The Daily Times noted, in its editorial, that the promised registration of 2002 was not being enacted. By November of that year work on the NEC had begun, and was completed fairly rapidly. What remains a worry for the author is the truth of the statistics. The International Crisis Group (ICG), in a striking paper[7], also estimated that the madarris teach one and a half million pupil in approximate terms, and the ICG South Asian head, Samina Ahmed[8], was considering a figure of 13,000 madarris. The fear then remains that the figures of the NEC are rigged, because they cut to close to the bone of commentators before them. It cannot be overstressed though that is a purely speculative approach, only the compilers can have full certainty over the reliability of their statistics. If the figures are true, then it is quite possible that a separate log exists with the names of teachers and institutions, garnered from this data, helping to keep a check on their activities. That indeed would be a commendable act.

2) The Pakistan Social and Living Standards Measurement Survey 2004–2005 (PSLM) took a sample survey of 76,520 houses to assess the Quality of Life for Pakistanis. The findings were interesting. 36% were satisfied with the Government’s Basic Health Facilities, 10.5% were satisfied with the Family Planning Services, 60% with Schools, 11.8% with Veterinary Services (mainly rural), 11% with Agriculture Extension (all rural) and 6.5% with the Police. Though satisfaction with education seems surprisingly high, the figures seem fairly accurate – the fact that they show Pakistanis are generally unhappy with state facilities, generally annuls the objection that the regime falsified the data. The Literacy Rate is 51%, which I would instinctively treat as a significant overestimate, still this compares to Iran’s 85%.

3) The porous nature of the Durand line border with Afghanistan is a cause for the erosion of Pakistan’s sovereignty. Three problems are identifiable: the refugee burden, the exchange of the terrorist network and the drug influx. The Mushurraf regime has laudably tried to get a grip on the situation by registering the Afghani refugee population, leading to some 1.6 million refugees having been registered[9]. Pakistan is also setting up a BioMetric Border Control System for checkpoints along the 2430km Durand Line[10]. Such collation of data may well prove critical in protecting the integrity of Pakistan.

It is a subtle irony that the stability of dictatorship is providing the basis for an institutionalistion that could well be utilised to strengthen the democratic principles of the country. That is not to say that this is necessarily the only way the data could be used. It is also worthwhile to note that such database projects are liable to contain data falsification for political purposes, incorrect values out of sheer incompetence and be limited from assessing the entire macro-level because of stretched resources. Nevertheless these available statistics of the society must be considered when framing social policy. Consider Pakistan. Pakistan is now the 6th most populous country in the world (after China, India, USA, Indonesia and Brazil)[11] with over 150 million citizens. By 2025 it is predicted that there will be a 50 million increase on top of that.

The 1998 census demonstrated that 53% of the population are in the productive age group (15-64) but the country is carrying the weight of 43% children. By 2020 that is projected to even out as the 0-14 age range will remain only 30%. There is an addition of 5 lives a minute to the population. The nation has a share of 0.6% of world space but 2.37% of the population. Further, take an imaginary Pakistani women, if she were to meet the average fertility rates annually, throughout her child-bearing cycle, she would be expected to have 4 children. This compares to 6.3 in the early 1970s. The population growth rate is 1.9% which means that, if maintained, it would take 36 years for the population to double. Two thirds of the country live on less than $2 a day. Unemployment is 3.6%. Four tenths of the population live below the poverty line, six tenths have single bedroom houses and eight tenths have no sanitation. What does all this tell us? That in order to fight our demons, we must first know them.

References
1. Ali, R., “Now or Never: Are we to Live or Perish Forever”, 1933, Cambridge
2. Weiss, A., “Much Ado About Counting” , Asian Survey, Vol. 39, No. 4, (Jul-Aug 1999), pp 679-693
3. The Pakistan Newswire, Population Census Important Tool for Public Policies: Shaukat Aziz, 23 Dec 2003, Islamabad
4. Business Recorder, “Nadra’s Database to reach 80 Million Mark Soon” , 21 Jun 2006
5. The Nation, “Credible Census” , 13 April 2006
6. Mir, A., “Schooling for Terror” , South Asia Intelligence Review, Vol III, No. 35, 14th March 2005
7. International Crisis Group, “Unfulfilled Promises: Pakistan’s Failure to Tackle Extremism” , ICG Asia Report No. 73, 16th Jan 2004, Islamabad/Brussels
8. Ahmed, S., “Juggling Figures, Ignoring Facts” , International Crisis Group, 7th March 2005
9. Balochistan Times, “Over 1.6 Million Afghans Registered in Landmark Exercise” , 21 January 2007
10. PakTribune , “Fencing Across the Border, Whose (sic) Fooling Who” , 17th January 2007
11. All statistics of this para taken from: National Institute of Population Studies, Population Growth & Its Implications, Sept 2005, Islamabad