ACCORDING to press reports, a population and housing census is being planned by the government. The first phase of the housing census is to be completed by April 10 while the population census will take off in mid-August. Satellite maps and relevant revenue records will also be consulted. This will be Pakistan's sixth census. In our country … utter carelessness mars the record. Usually this job is entrusted to school teachers in urban and rural areas, who have to collect information from illiterate persons because of the low literacy rate. Once, the people of Punjab were not represented correctly and their mother tongue was registered as Urdu. It was sad to see Muslim and Hindu communities posing as Urdu-speaking and Hindi-speaking respectively. The only religious community which rightly got Punjabi as their mother tongue comprised the Sikhs.Many years after independence, in some areas people were coaxed into getting Urdu registered as their mother tongue. Then again in some southern areas [of Punjab] the people were asked to get registered as their mother tongue an established and old Punjabi dialect. The aim was that in future Punjab could be divided along linguistic lines. …In the past, population figures were exaggerated not only in a provincial face-off but also in the case of cities versus the rural areas. Parliamentarians were also involved in [artificially] swelling the numbers…. [Because of such practices] the whole process became doubtful. …Now that the sixth population census is being planned, it is necessary that facts and figures be honestly recorded. This is the age of computers and the government should not shy away from using advanced technology. — (March 24)

Selected and translated by S.T.M