CENSUS 2017 is being carried out after a gap of 19 years. A week before the census started, one political party expressed its concern over the census details ordered to be filled in pencil in Sindh. This party then used social media and other means of communication to ask the people not to allow the census staff fill any detail in pencil.

This was followed by another objection raised by certain quarters that the census form ignored transgenders. Last but not least, the Sikh community raised its concern that the census form did not have their community’s name mentioned in the religion column of the census form. The form later had to be amended to remove this anomaly.

I put the following questions to the government: 1) To whom did the government assign the task of preparing the census form? 2) Why did those assigned with the task ignore the transgender and Sikh communities? 3) Why was the census form not discussed in parliament or publicised in the media asking for citizens’ feedback? A job half done is a job not done at all.

M. Rafique Zakaria

Karachi

Published in Dawn, March 24th, 2017