Date: Saturday,February 20, 2016.

Possible census delay?

NOBODY ever said that the population census would be an easy exercise. Now that the time has come to deliver on a promise that was made last year to hold the population census by March 2016, suggestions are being floated that the exercise needs to be postponed.

The latest such suggestion has come from Sardar Akhtar Mengal of the BNP in Balochistan. He has argued that the security situation in his province is not conducive to holding such a large exercise, and that the presence of a large number of Afghan refugees is an obstacle; that they should be ‘repatriated’ before the population count.

Take a look: Need to create awareness of census stressed

The chief minister of Balochistan and his predecessor have made similar arguments. Earlier, the government hinted that the exercise might prove difficult to carry out according to schedule because of the large number of troops required, which the army apparently cannot spare at the moment given its commitments in the anti-terror operations in the country.

The census commissioner had told the media in January that he might need more than 350,000 troops for the exercise — one for each of the 167,000 census blocks and more for overall security of the military personnel.

These hints and suggestions regarding the difficulties facing the exercise are coming far too late in the day. The announcement to hold the census was made in March last year, and we have had a full year almost to prepare for the mammoth exercise.

Yet work didn’t begin in earnest until at least September, five months down the road, when the first funds for the immense logistics were released by the finance ministry. Delays have also hit the surveys of the mauzas and blocks along the way.

The security situation was known all along and it defies understanding why it was not addressed as a priority earlier. Likewise for the presence of refugees in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

If the state can identify who is and who is not a refugee for a repatriation exercise, why can’t it do the same for a census exercise? None of these reasons are convincing when raised so late in the day.

Not only this, the government is also displaying its famous disregard for broadening ownership and stakes in the complex exercise.

All but one of the members of the governing council of the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics, which is tasked with conducting the exercise, are from Punjab, as are all of the bureau’s executive members. Some of the provincial assemblies have passed resolutions complaining about this.

Having lost time, and failing to evolve a consensus among the provinces about the holding of the exercise, the government now appears to be looking for an excuse to back out of its commitment. Let’s hope this is not so.

JNU controversy

THE past few days have witnessed quite a stir on many university campuses in India. In various cities, students have marched to denounce the arrest in Delhi of Kanhaiya Kumar, president of the Jawaharlal Nehru University Students’ Union on charges of sedition.

Mr Kumar’s detractors claim he raised anti-India slogans at an event on campus — a charge he denies — held to mark the execution of Afzal Guru.

Political undertones are evident in these developments as Mr Kumar comes from a leftist background, while those leading the campaign against him mostly belong to the ABVP, a student outfit linked to the Hindu supremacist Sangh Parivar.

The student leader was thrashed by lawyers as he arrived for a court appearance in Delhi; police reportedly did little to stop the attack.

The controversy is yet another example of India’s lurch towards the hard right. In today’s India, those disagreeing with the Sangh’s version of how things should be are usually branded as ‘anti-national’.

These toxic levels of ultranationalism are diametrically opposed to democratic values; as we in Pakistan know all too well that if space is ceded to the hard right, very soon democratic principles come under attack.

The hard right in India has been rising steadily ever since it made its violent national debut with the destruction of the Babri Masjid in 1992.

Thereafter, the Sangh’s influence, especially that of the RSS, has been increasing, particularly in the political arena, so much so that under the BJP’s watch, the saffronisation of India is undeniable. While once the RSS worked in the shadows, today it proudly hosts massive public meetings to display its muscle.

Moreover, baiting minorities, especially Muslims, has become kosher, even though many of India’s artists and intellectuals have spoken out against the rising levels of intolerance. This is unfortunate because India has a largely secular constitution and prides itself on being the world’s largest democracy.

But when freedom of expression is threatened and dissent is crushed, secularism and democracy face imminent threat. Sedition is a very serious charge and should not be thrown around loosely.

It appears that a hard-hitting speech made by Mr Kumar critical of the Sangh had a role in his arrest.

Even some ABVP activists have spoken out against the witch hunt. Indian state and society need to reflect upon these developments; what is clear is that ultranationalism and hyper-patriotism are the first step towards the extinction of fundamental rights and freedom of conscience.

Vaccination refusals

THE apparent apathy of both state and society to Pakistan’s polio problem can in some measure be attributed to the fact that this is an issue that has become calcified.

The back and forth between a state with sluggish capacity and a population that is in general under-educated, continues.

The situation has been worsened by a number of attacks, many of them proving deadly, in recent years on polio workers who in any case face a monumental task in ensuring that each and every child in the country is vaccinated.

Though the number of families refusing the OPV has decreased after the act was made an offence inviting arrest last year, Karachi’s experience during the ongoing polio drive has highlighted a new dimension: some two dozen schools have refused to let polio teams enter their premises (even though they had earlier been sent letters in this regard from official quarters), relenting only upon the intervention of senior authorities.

Much can be read into the reasons cited by the schools for their unwillingness to cooperate. These managements insisted, first, that their students had already been vaccinated as a matter of course, following routine immunisation schedules; and second, that parents objected to their children being administered the drops in their absence and without their express consent.

Worth pondering on is the possibility that the parents’ reluctance may stem from reasons other than the commonly cited ideological/religious ones, especially the trust deficit that is known to exist between citizens and the state apparatus.

Questions have been raised, after all, about the efficacy of the drops; for example, often it has not been possible to maintain the cold-chain process.

There have been reports of expired or compromised vials. Plugging this trust deficit requires long-term engagement and regular awareness drives.

Meanwhile, the predicament that schools find themselves in is easily solved: administrations could require copies of the children’s routine immunisation records to be provided, which would immediately identify those who have already been administered the polio vaccine