THE sixth population census is now overdue by six years and yet another attempt to conduct it has reportedly been shelved due to political opposition. Although reports to the effect have yet to be confirmed, much of the political noise surrounding the census exercise appears to suggest that agreement on holding it is still a distant goal.

A clean and impartial census is badly required in Pakistan today because the picture we have of our demographic trend and population ratios is woefully out of date. Census data underpins policymaking in important ways — from targeted programmes, to population planning measures, to measurements of employment and population growth and the youth bulge. Updated census data is critical to sound policy implementation.

A number of issues stand in the way of a clean census. For one, because Sindh has absorbed the largest share of inward migration in the country, with people from the other provinces moving into Karachi, Hyderabad and Sukkur, ethnic sensitivities have been fanned.

Sindhi nationalist parties as well as the MQM fear that an accurate count of the provincial population could significantly reduce their percentage of the total, with broad political and psychological ramifications.

Moreover, the results of the 1998 census are viewed with considerable scepticism, again in Sindh, with legislators repeatedly alleging over the years that the population of the province has been deliberately understated.

Demographers find reason to agree. They point out that population ratios of the provinces are almost exactly the same between the 1981 and 1998 censuses despite a gap of 17 years between them and the very large migration from Punjab and KP towards Sindh during that period. This would suggest that data was manipulated to ensure that the provincial shares of seats in parliament as well as resource transfers under the NFC award were not affected by new statistics.

If it is true that the 1998 census data was manipulated to suppress the head count in Sindh, then it stands to reason that a clean and impartial census now would show a very large deviation from the provincial population ratios that the current seat shares and resource transfers are built upon.

Such a large shake-up in the federation is grounds for apprehension for Punjab-based parties, which is why they appear reluctant to carry out the exercise.

So how do we move forward given these political apprehensions? Perhaps we can find some answers in the example of India where the government enacted a freeze, via a constitutional amendment in 2002, of delimitation of seat shares until the year 2026, irrespective of the results of the census. This released the exercise from all political apprehensions.

A compromise of this sort can work for Pakistan as well to allow a clean census to proceed. The politicians can retain their status quo, and policymakers can have the updated data they need to build sound policies upon.

Published in Dawn, November 8th , 2014