No Census Please

DECEMBER 1997 - Trust the Cabinet to be a bunch of spoil sports. Just as we were getting used to nothing really happening, there’s bad news from Islamabad. There is going to be a census after all, in March. 1998 I might as well add. Well this is not going to cheer up the country one bit.

It goes without saying that we really don’t need a census. If we have managed to live without one since 1981, I see little point in breaking our backs to have one now. Just because some countries wish to live their lives by numbers does not mean that we have to ape them and have silly things like a census. After all what good will it do ? We will find out that instead of 50 cattle we are now left with 49, so big deal. And instead of forty seven thousand schools without fans we actually have no schools without fans. I mean what will this information or lack of it do for us ? All the previous governments have always taken a sane and progressive attitude where this census thing was concerned. They simply ignored the damn thing. A healthy and enviable precedent is now going to be cast asunder come March 1998. And they are complaining about institutions going to the dogs ? Give me a break guys. This census thing is really going to rock the boat.

Two generations of Pakis have grown up without knowing whether there were fifteen people in the house next door or ten. It has not made the slightest difference. Let us assume that they knew there were ten. How in the world could this have affected them ? They still broke the rules, cheated at exams, conned their parents, beat up their kid brothers, vandalised public property, ducked responsibility and behaved like louts everytime they spotted a woman. So if there were fifteen instead of ten in reality, how would it have changed anything at all ? I cannot understand those people who want a census held. What good will come of it ? We will still end up fighting till the year 3000 about the merits and demerits of Kalabagh Dam and still come to no conclusion. No this census caper definitely needs to be nipped in the bud, provided you can nip these census things in the bud. Ours must be a blooming giant rose by now or perhaps morphed into a cauliflower, the national flower that sponsors of useless and boring seminars are often seen wearing to look more important than the next cauliflower.

In any case there are far too many difficulties about holding a census. For starters we have never held one for 17 years so it will take us a few censuses (is there such an animal ?) to get used to it. Who knows what entails once a country decides to throw caution to the winds and jump into the census cesspool. Apparently there are two things that are absolutely essential before we can have a census. Teachers and schools. This is the kind of start no country wants, certainly not ours, because as we all know, we neither have schools or teachers. Even if we do, who is going to teach the teachers, since they haven’t read anything other than their name for the past many years. As for schools, well show me one and I’ll present you three anti-contempt of court potions. Even if we have the two magic ingredients, when can we ever have a census using the schools without pushing our country’s educational march further into the Neolithic age ? We can’t have a census in the winter months because it is too cold. We can’t have it in Ramzan because we can’t have it in Ramzan. We can’t have it in spring because there’s hardly a spring here and it is impossible in summer because we can’t do anything in summer anyway without getting our brains fried, a commodity already in critically short supply. There’s no autumn worth the name and that cooks the census goose as far as I am concerned.

If we have it in summer, half the country can’t participate. If we have it in winter, half the country can’t participate. If it’s sunny here, it’s snowing there. If it isn’t snowing, there’s flooding and in between mercury does funny things climbing poles it shouldn’t be climbing. Personally, I think we would be well advised to call the whole thing off. So we’ll never know how many of us are here, but think about it for a moment. Even if we did, what good will come of it ? We have trained ourselves over the years to manage on guess work. Everything is estimated and we never know exactly what is it we are talking about, which is fine and dandy with me. Heck we don’t even know when the Eid moon is going to be sighted and very often are still in three minds on the very day whether it is the day or not, so let’s call the census off before it’s too late..