Making sense of census

Census is a snapshot of demographic, economic, political and statistical portrait of the country and its people. Being a snapshot, it's a static, but can become dynamic tool, if supplemented with timely longitudinal surveys to capture strategic shifts in industry, services, and social sector trends. Census is pivotal in shaping more effective socio-economic and development policies. In hindsight, our planners and policymakers have been driving the economy by looking back, using a 19-year-old rear-view mirror of 1998 census data set. Billions of dollars thus wasted could have been saved, or well-utilised, if the policymakers had not blindly chased the proverbial windmills like Don Quixote for almost two decades on unproductive expenditure based purely on guesstimates and fuzzy priorities.
Data captured accurately in census is indispensable in social policy analysis, development planning, social and economic programme management, revenue generation, and prioritising national issues for decision making regarding budgetary allocations. Thus, census is indeed the most important policy instrument for any democratic dispensation that believes in economic growth and social development planning, provided the data collection mechanism is efficiently designed, and effectively implemented to yield comprehensive and credible qualitative and quantitative census data accessible to the public.
However, accurate and adequate data capture is one thing, and its effective use quite another. How the federal and provincial governments really intend to use meta-data for development planning and allocating proportionately more funds for socio-economic equality for balancing the needs of the backward regions with the mega-projects of rich provinces is a $64 million dollar political question.
Let's examine how the 6th Census falls short of needs and expectations to adequately prioritise our national objectives and to plan our development goals, based on socio-economic indicators.
Inadequate data capture falls short of development goals
-- The data capture of the PBS woefully falls short of providing a solid statistical base for planning development goals. For example, we have no reliable details of employment and unemployment numbers and rates, especially of youth between the age bracket of 15-25.
-- We need to emphasise the tectonic demographic shifts among different age groups, rather than simply estimate the population growth rate.
Thematic mapping
-- Qualitative and quantitative data about predominant occupations and professions that is apparently missing from the questionnaire, will go a long way in identifying job, skill gaps and farm size, types, agricultural activity, crops productivity, and number of people engaged in horticulture, and other commercial trades, including e-commerce start-up businesses.
-- Population centres can then be grouped into clusters and clusters should match administrative units. Technically, the census data collection is not structured to match the administrative units.
Income, employment and unemployment
-- Census fails to collect information on income sources, whether salary or business income, pension, old age benefit, and other welfare benefits. This census can be a golden opportunity to find out if the respondent is a tax filer with an NTN. Why such vital statistics is missed out when the tax payer base is just 1.1 million, when the government wants to promote a tax culture? Obviously, this loophole is not by default, but by design, to protect special interest groups.
-- Level of income, adjusted for inflation, reflects the purchasing power of the low-income groups to afford the food basket, school fees, health and transportation costs of a typical household. Real wages must be raised, in line with inflation, if they are well below purchasing power.
-- Part-time workers: those mostly engaged in agriculture or horticulture, even students, work part-time, but the census does not bother to capture this crucial 'underemployment' data.
-- The questionnaire includes 'search for work' query but does not ask how many weeks or months has the person remained out of work. More than six months' unemployment is a measure of chronic unemployment. Unfortunately, no serious attempt is made to gather data of 'structurally unemployed' to calculate the national unemployment rate.
-- Child labour: there are perhaps millions of children in forced or bonded labour, whether at home, or at restaurants, at truck stations, or working in brick kilns or factories, even begging at the traffic lights. The census is silent on this vital social statistic which I call "wageless workers."
Poverty - bad governance raises food basket cost
-- Poverty threshold is not defined. We use the same cut-and-dried UN yardstick of $1.25 or $2 per day as the poverty threshold. However, each country has its own dynamics of food basket cost, import inflation, exchange rate differential, and governance issues. Bad governance means market monopolies and less effective price regulatory mechanism leading to higher food cost.
-- Billions poured into 'sasti roti' and BB Card scheme or other cash transfer schemes, have not been evaluated for their real positive impact on the net poverty rate. Likely, more people are below the line poverty since 2008, falling through the cracks of chronic unemployment.
Safe drinking water and adequate sanitation
-- No reliable statistics is available on what percentage of population having access to safe drinking water. Most people confuse clean drinking water with safe drinking water. So-called mineral water sold by international and local companies is largely filtered, that is, the water looks clean, but not necessarily safe, as it is not treated for harmful pathogens, microbes and fungi. Unfortunately, majority of population is vulnerable to waterborne diseases because the governments have failed to provide adequately filtered and treated piped water to all rural and urban homes. Under the USAID-Pakistan Safe Drinking Water and Hygiene Project (2006-2011) millions of dollars were provided in technical assistance to the government for sustainable water filtration plants in 30 rural districts. Provincial governments failed to take the ownership of filtration plants most of which shut down, except those run by communities themselves.
-- Census lists down sources of drinking water such as tap, hand pump, canal, stream, and well. Census asks a loaded question if the well is safe or unsafe well. How will the respondent know unless he or she has tested its quality with a reliable water testing kit? There is no such thing as an 'safe' well. All wells have contamination, TDS, even arsenic, particularly in Sindh and Punjab.
Sanitation: the census aims to collect data on hygiene practices and sanitation facilities. But the census asks a misleading question if the respondent uses a 'open area' as a toilet. The relevant data that can be simply collected with a dichotomous question which is whether the house has adequate toilet (flush or septic tank) or do the respondents openly defecate? Estimated data indicate that a large number of rural population still engages in open-field defecation.
Housing
-- House questions ask the respondent if he or she is living in self-owned home, or rented premises. Strangely, a census sub-question asks if the premises is without rent. If the house is not owned, nor rented, then it's either illegally occupied or gifted by someone else. In any case, there is economic rent of the premises.
Ethnicity, literacy, education and skills gap
-- There's a sinister political angle in the one dimension question about mother tongue to determine ethnicity. What about families who are multilingual? Is it not sufficient to have a Pakistan identity?
-- Regarding education, the census asks about the educational qualifications. Will the enumerator check the certificate, diploma or degree or marks sheet to confirm if the academic credentials are indeed as claimed? Also, what methodology will the enumerator use to verify the basic literacy markers to read, write, and do simple math? How will the census staff tell if the respondents are exaggerating or telling the truth?
-- Also, a crucial piece of information missed out can be collected along with academic qualifications. Ask what skills and training that the respondents possess in their field of study. This will be vital for determining the technological gaps in the national skills inventory such as information, communication and technology (ICT) skills, management and leadership skills that is essential for skills training programs for youth between 15-25, especially training for women.
-- Census fails to capture data on the dropout rate of erstwhile school-going children. The figure most quoted is 24 million, which is grossly outdated and underestimated.
Mental health - psychological disability not counted
-- Mental health is a very serious national issue. Millions of people are suffering from depression, anxiety, stress and other mental conditions. Thus, it is imperative that not only physical but 'psychological disability' must also be captured in the 6th census. Otherwise, how will the public and private stakeholders allocate appropriate resources to prevent and treat mental health?
-- Rural Health: Data on number of doctors, nursing staff, patient beds, medicines, medical equipment and pathological laboratory facilities at tehsil and district hospitals is crucial for determining capacity for health delivery to serve our predominantly rural populations.
-- Data must also be collected on qualified and registered alternative medicine practitioners.
Socio-economic needs as an equitable benchmark for development budget allocation
-- Population density - number of persons per square kilometre - must be used to delineate population centres divided into small (example: 10,000-49,999) medium (example: 50,000-99,999), and a large (example: 100,000-149,999). In addition, the spatial analysis and 'ecumene' (how much of the area is inhabited land where some type of permanent economic activity is taking place as opposed to vast wasteland, for example, Baluchistan). Thus, using population density or population size alone as a benchmark for allocating development funds is unjust and inequitable, without factoring in the spatial analysis and ecumene for fair and equitable distribution of development budgets for the sparsely populated economic backwaters like Baluchistan, FATA, or even densely populated South Punjab and interior Sindh. Thus, using the faulty logic of higher population, the majority population provinces always tend to bite off the largest slice of the budget pie while poorest provinces are left with crumbs and remain mired in a self-perpetuating poverty.
Data attrition - census must be every five years
-- In a digital age, when complex meta data can be collected and crunched more efficiently by super computers powered by statistical software and data analytics, it is imperative that the census be conducted every five years instead of ten years. Ten-year-old data is already outdated and distorts any projections that can approximate future strategic planning horizon.
-- By conducting timely longitudinal surveys, we can capture fresh data to make end line adjustments against the baseline by connecting the dots of key changes in socio-economic and demographic indicators, investment, education and technology trends, and career patterns.
Timely release of census data
-- After census data collection, tabulation, collation, analysis, synthesis and interpretation, the longer the findings are concealed from the public domain, the greater the risk and probability of data manipulation for political ends. Our politicians should be more serious in 'defining problems' instead of just 'defining moments' based on real time, accurate, comprehensive and credible census data for addressing Pakistan's complex and myriad socio-economic and political problems.
(The writer is a public-private partnership specialist and a social development strategist)