KARACHI: Experts at a seminar have said that most political parties are actually afraid of outcomes of a fair census and stressed that in the larger interest of the country and the people an exact count of population and households is necessary.

They said political parties feared that census would expose radical demographic changes taking place in the country and would affect their decades-long monopoly on resources.

“Census should be held in Pakistan. It has already delayed for many years, which helps a minority of people at the cost of most of the middle class and the poor population of the country,” said Dr Mehtab S. Karim, an eminent research professor at the seminar on census organised by the Irtiqa Institute of Social Sciences (IISS) at its office on Sunday.

Dr Mehtab S. Karim, who is the vice chancellor of the Malir University of Science and Technology, said the army could help hold a credible man-count across the country.

He said Sindh experienced a phenomenal population growth for an alarmingly healthy fertility rate and migration from elsewhere in the country. “Some 40pc of the total migration in Pakistan comes to Karachi,” he said.

He said based on survival ratio of the population in the 1981 census, his calculations suggested that about 10 million people were undercounted in the 1998 census.

“After taking into account emigration of three to four million people between 1981 and 98, the undercount could be about six million. Based on evidence from various surveys and much lower contraceptive use in rural areas of Sindh, it is likely that about five to six million fewer people were counted in the 1998 Census.”

He said after adjusting for that undercount, Sindh’s population was perhaps about 25pc of Pakistan population (instead of 23pc as reported in the 1998 census).

“This has resulted in lower allocation of resources to Sindh in the last NFC awards,” he said.

He added that the1998 census indicated that while Karachi contained about seven per cent of the country’s population, over 40 of all those who migrated internally during the past ten years ended up in the city. In comparison, the four largest cities — Lahore, Faisalabad, Rawalpindi and Multan which combined together contained about 21pc of the country’s population — received about the same number of internal migrants.

Social scientist Dr S. Akbar Zaidi said most of the areas of Pakistan, which had been considered as rural, were little rural in character.

Those rural areas contained more urban characteristics, he added.

Similarly, the vast fringes of Karachi, which were still called villages, could be called city outskirts instead of its rural parts.

He said the households in the rural Sindh were more populous than the elsewhere in the country.

Barrister Ravi Pinjani gave references of various authors vis-a-vis the history of decennial census in the areas now called Pakistan since 1881 by the British colonialists. He referred to a Zeenat Hisam’s essay, which said after the fourth census, democratically elected governments showed aversion to evidence-based policies and equitable development.

He said it took 18 years to announce another census in March 2016.

He agreed with the notion that the decennial census was delayed due to political reasons for many important policies were to be decided in light of the result of a census, which included allocation of the national and provincial assembly seats, distribution of funds between the federation and the provinces made through National Finance Commission and the quota for recruitment to federal posts, etc.

Zulfiqar Halepoto of the Centre for Social Change said state had withdrawn its duties as institutional collapse had brought communities against each other.

Published in Dawn, May 23rd, 2016