Census: Preliminary : Pakistan population > 192M

(Click on the image for a larger version)
Sources of data:
http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/unpp/panel_population.htm
http://www.pap.org.pk/statistics/population.htm#tab1.3
and below.

http://www.thenews.com.pk/Todays-News-13-13514-Population-shoots-up-by-47-percent-since-1998

That Pakistan's population is 192+ million is supposedly the preliminary count from the 2011 census.  The previous census was in 1998, when the population was 131 million.    If these figures are correct (but every figure from Pakistan needs to be taken with a degree of skepticism), the experts been greatly mis-estimating Pakistan's population growth rate.

For instance, the World Bank lists for Pakistan, Population, total (2010, estimated) 173,593,383.

The UN estimates were:

Year	Value
1995	127,347,000
2000	144,522,000
2005	158,645,000
2010	173,593,000
2015	189,648,000

and so on. 
 http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/unpp/panel_population.htm
There are low, medium, high, and constant fertility population projections available there for all countries, including Pakistan.  Even in the high projection, Pakistan reaches 191 million only in 2015.

The constant fertility projection is as follows, which means that fertility in Pakistan can only be increasing - i.e., more surviving children per woman.

Year  Pop('000s)
1995    127347
2000    144522
2005    158645
2010    173593
2015    192422
2020    213758
2025    237213
2030    261599
2035    287169
2040    314904
2045    345569
2050    379242
 

The state of Pakistani population statistics

The state of Pakistani official statistics is interesting.

After a story earlier in the year, about preliminary results from the Pakistan census 2011,  showing the population to be 192+ million, there is nothing further.

The Economic Survey of Pakistan 2011-12
http://www.finance.gov.pk/survey_1112.html

gives a figure for the population of Pakistan, 2011, as 177 million.
Their source is:
National Institute of Population Studies, Planning & Development Division, June 2010

Trying to chase that down, I find another survey, where the source for the 177 million is given as:
"P&D, Division, National Institute of Population Studies (NIPS), CIA Fact Book".
( http://www.infopak.gov.pk/EconomicSurvey/12-Population.pdf )

Their official publication depends on the CIA fact book!!!!

The last actual survey from NIPS appears to be from 2007.
( http://nips.org.pk/ )

This also appears to be the case with the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics.
http://www.pbs.gov.pk/population_publications

Anyway, the CIA Fact Book has in the meantime been updated.
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/pk.html
Pakistan's population is:
190,291,129 (July 2012 est.)

Gauba on the Sikhs

K.L. Gauba, Consequences of Pakistan, 1946:

The Problem of Khalistan

But the foregoing table is only a faint indication of the problem involved. A separation of the Ambala Division from Punjab would mean the division of Sikhs of the Punjab into two provinces.

Are the Sikhs willing to be so divided ?

Pakistan population projections

The preliminary count of population from all the land areas controlled by Pakistan as per the abandoned Pakistan census of 2011 was 197 million, per leaked preliminary figures.

In 2017, a census was conducted and the results were to be released July 31st or so.  However, after Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had to resign over corruption charges, the release of the census figures is in doubt, it may be November.   What we know of the census is

Census Coordinator Habibullah Khattak told BBC {Urdu} in an interview that the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) {had completed the census process and that} the country’s population can be between 210 to 220 million

The last completed census of Pakistan was in 1998, which showed a population of 130.9 million.

The chart below shows population projections from the United Nations from 2012, plus the Pakistan actual figures up to 1998, and the 2011 and 2017 census leaks.  The 2017 range of 210-220 million is shown as two dots.

As is dismaying clear, Pakistan continues to range above the constant fertility population projection.

Pakistan Census 2017 - population 210-220 million

The data gathering for Pakistan's census 2017 has completed; the first official numbers are expected by July.  However back in 2011-12, the data was gathered, a preliminary figure of 192 million was rumored, and then the census was abandoned.  So it remains to be seen if this census will be more successful.

Already, the news is  "Initial estimates after Census 2017 put population at 21-22 crores", i.e., 210-220 million.   The Pakistan Economic Survey 2016-17 from the Finance Ministry of Pakistan puts the population of Pakistan at 199.71 million.

The 2015 United Nations projections with various assumptions give the following estimates for Pakistan's population in 2017:

Variant                          Population
Low                               196.217 million
Medium                         196.744 million
High                               197.272 million
Constant Fertility          197.315 million

Another way of looking at it is that per the constant fertility projection, Pakistan was to reach 214 million in 2020.  So the rumors today, like in 2012, suggest that the official numbers are a gross underestimate.

PS: 

Pakistan Census 2017

Provisional census results put Pakistan’s population at 207.774 million

Shown below are the Pakistan census results over the years (the dots) and the low(blue), red(high) and constant-fertility(green) variants of the United Nations population projects for Pakistan made in 2012.

 
 Pakistan's annual population growth rate is said to be 2% - 2.4%.
(2% comes from the Google compilation of data as the rate in 2016; 2.4% is the growth rate averaged from 1998 to 2017.)

At a 2% growth rate, and at 207.774 million in 2017, Pakistan in 2020 will be 220.5 million strong. This is above the constant-fertility variant of the 2012 UN population projection.


The 2012 UN table is here:

Low variant		High variant		Constant-fertility variant
Year	Value	Year	Value	Year	Value
1950	37542	1950	37542	1950	37542
1955	41109	1955	41109	1955	41109
1960	45920	1960	45920	1960	45920
1965	51993	1965	51993	1965	51993
1970	59383	1970	59383	1970	59383
1975	68483	1975	68483	1975	68483
1980	80493	1980	80493	1980	80493
1985	95470	1985	95470	1985	95470
1990	111845	1990	111845	1990	111845
1995	127347	1995	127347	1995	127347
2000	144522	2000	144522	2000	144522
2005	158645	2005	158645	2005	158645
2010	173593	2010	173593	2010	173593
2015	187919	2015	191378	2015	192422
2020	200540	2020	210189	2020	213758
2025	211629	2025	229589	2025	237213
2030	221103	2030	247779	2030	261599
2035	228766	2035	264967	2035	287169
2040	234396	2040	281781	2040	314904
2045	237695	2045	298374	2045	345569
2050	238538	2050	314272	2050	379242
2055	237045	2055	328856	2055	415670
2060	233311	2060	341769	2060	454747
2065	227493	2065	353298	2065	496968
2070	219755	2070	363895	2070	543245
2075	210376	2075	373869	2075	594497
2080	199757	2080	383325	2080	651358
2085	188372	2085	392285	2085	714296
2090	176629	2090	400837	2090	783759
2095	164873	2095	409175	2095	860368
2100	153363	2100	417464	2100	944843

Some letters of Sardar Patel

Sardar Patel’s daughter, Maniben Patel, deposited his papers with the Navajivan Trust, Ahmedabad. Around 1970 Maniben Patel decided that it was time to make public Sardar Patel’s correspondence. The Navajivan Trust brought in Durga Das, former Chief Editor of the Hindustan Times, as editor, and ten volumes of correspondence, covering the period 1945-1950 were published.

Volume III, Chapter IV contains letters related to the Cabinet Mission Plan. Some of those are reproduced here.  I don't think any commentary is needed, because Sardar Patel's point of view is expressed very clearly.

From the First Constituent Assembly

From here:

This speech was delivered by Mr. Sris Chandra Chattopadhya in opposition to Objectives Resolution, in Constituent Assembly of Pakistan on 12 March 1949.

No census for Pakistan?

The Express Tribune reports:

LAHORE: The ruling Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PML-N) is caught between a rock and a hard place. Despite its eagerness to reap political dividends from holding the long-delayed sixth census, the ruling party has decided against conducting the population count for fear of unrest following its results. The country’s fifth and last census was carried out in 1998.

Sources privy to the February 10 meeting of the Council of Common Interests revealed that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif dropped the most critical feature of the council’s agenda after consultation with stakeholders. It was learnt by The Express Tribune that no major political party expressed willingness to have the population census. The ruling party asked Nawaz to defer the exercise to avoid ‘negative repercussions’.

The statistics division put the population census on the CCI’s agenda, but Nawaz issued directions to drop it for an indefinite period when almost all participants of the meeting requested a postponement to avoid political and national turmoil till a new mechanism is developed.

Some census information

Since this is important for the joint electorate + reservations issue:

Undivided India
Percent of Total Population in Each Religion 1881-1941

                  Hindu    Muslim

1881              78.09    19.97

1891              74.24    20.41

1901              72.87    21.88

1911              71.68    22.39

1921              70.73    23.23

1931              70.67    23.49

1941              69.46    24.28

From Davis Kingsley, The Population of India and Pakistan, ~1951.

Congress response to the Delhi Muslim Proposals

Source: The Indian Quarterly Register vol 1 (1927)
New Digital Library of India.

Summary of the Proceedings of the Working Committee which met at Taj Mahal Hotel, Bombaby, 15th May 1927 and the following days.

N.W.F.P. election results 1946

Always check the facts when dealing with Pakistani liberals.

In this article on pakteahouse.net,  it is claimed

Dr Khan Sahib became the premier after the 1946 election on the basis of 30 members in a House of 50. Out of these 30 members, 12 were Hindu MLAs and 16 were Muslim MLAs on Muslims seats (not 19 as Bangash claims repeatedly).

A little bit later, the article tells us that the Jamiat Ulema-i-Hind, an ally of the Congress Party (which is correct).

In "Muslims, Nationalism and the Partition: 1946 Provincial Elections in India" (1998) , Sho Kuwajima provides the party-wise results (page 230) : Congress 30, Jamiat-ul-Ulema 2, Akali 1, Muslim League 17.

Since the Jamiat Ulema-i-Hind was an ally of the Congress Party, it means that Dr Khan Sahib became the premier after the 1946 election on the basis of 32 members (I don't yet know about the Akali (Sikh) member).

Page 231 of the same book tells us of the Muslim seats, Congress won 19, the Muslim League 17, and the Jamiat-ul-Ulema won 2.

Thus of the Congress 30, 19 were Muslim exactly as Bangash claims repeatedly, and 11 were non-Muslim.

----
Whenever these elections are mentioned, we should note that the total electorate in the 1946 elections was 41,075,839.  The estimated population of India in 1945 was 299,621,000.  Sho Kuwajima estimates that "the proportion of the total electorate to all the population of the same age group may be roughly less than 28 per cent."

PS: Here is one of the articles of Bangash that is perhaps the source of the argument.

Muslimizing Calcutta

Excerpts from a letter from Raghib Ahsan to M.A. Jinnah, 25 January 1947 follow.   This is from the Zaidi collection of Jinnah papers.  There is no reply from Jinnah to Ahsan in the Zaid collection.  Ahsan's ideas are not in any way binding on Jinnah.  This letter however illustrates the mood of the times.  Demographic engineering was in the air.  The refugees driven from Bihar by Hindu rioters presented an opportunity.

Because of imperfect imaging from my iphone, there are lacunae.

Emphasis added.

Pakistan's admission to the United Nations

Pakistan was admitted to the United Nations on September 30, 1947. Legally, independent India is seen as the successor state to British India, and Pakistan as the new creation. So India is seen as having participated in the founding of the United Nations.

After the Security Council unanimously recommended the admission of Yemen and Pakistan to the UN, the General Assembly took up the resolution; and Afghanistan was the only nay-sayer to Pakistan's admission. (The vote was 53-1-0).  India welcomed Pakistan's admission; and I don't know why that vote doesn't put to rest the perpetual Pakistani paranoia that the Congress-led  Government of India wanted to undo Partition.

The UN website carries details of the resolution and accompanying speeches.

Lieven: Pakistan and Taliban

In his narration of events in Afghanistan, Lieven mentions the Taliban and the Northern Alliance; he fails to mention Pakistan's support of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. 

Wiki: From 1992 to 1996 the warring factions destroyed most of Kabul and killed thousands of people, most of them civilians during the Afghan civil war. All the different parties participated in the destruction, but Hekmatyar's group was responsible for most of the damage, because of his practice of deliberately targeting civilian areas.^[29] Hekmatyar is thought to have bombarded Kabul in retaliation for what he considered its inhabitants' collaboration with the Soviets, and out of religious conviction. He once told a New York Times journalist that Afghanistan "already had one and a half million martyrs. We are ready to offer as many to establish a true Islamic Republic."^[30] His attacks also had a political objective: to undermine the Rabbani government by proving that Rabbani and Massoud were unable to protect the population.

The above was during the period that Pakistan backed Hekmatyar [especially see document 29 ** (PDF)].

Lieven:

Incidentally, it is worth pointing out that even entirely secular members of the Pakistani establishment do not see the Afghan Taleban as morally worse than the Taleban's old enemies in the Afghan Northern Alliance leaders, with whom the West has in effect been allied since 2001.  Their atrocities and rapes in the 1990s helped cement Pathan support for the Taleban.

----------
**
(Summary of document 29:

This summary details recent events in Afghanistan and the role of Pakistan in supporting the Taliban movement. It describes how Pakistan preferred to groom incompetent commanders such as Gulbuddin Hekmatyar for leadership positions in Afghanistan who would then be reliant upon Pakistan. The failure of supporting Hekmatyar, which "effectively saw the lebanonization of Afghanistan," caused the Pakistanis to introduce the Taliban. The account notes that "Pakistan has lost every war it has ever fought." The cable also notes that "it must be a deeply troubling period for General (Musharraf) in Pakistan, who is asked to help hunt down the culprits that he helped to establish," and ends with a summary of the al-Qaeda agenda, the Pakistani agenda, and the death of Ahmad Shah Masoud in the context of the downing of the twin towers.

)

Past the Crossroads

Feroz Khan on PTH

Pakistaniyat

SSridhar on BRF:

One of Pakistan’s best known historians, Prof. K.K.Aziz, in his book, “Murder of History” has the following to say of a Pakistani propensity:

Almost every Muslim of any importance claimed, and still claims today, in his autobiography reminiscences, memoirs, journal and bio data, that his ancestors had come from Yemen, Hejaz,* Central Asia, Iran, Ghazni, or some other foreign territory. In most cases, this is a false claim for its arithmetic reduces the hordes of local converts (to Islam) to an insignificant number. Actually, it is an aftermath and confirmation of Afghan and Mughal exclusiveness. It is also a declaration of disaffiliation from the soil on which the shammers have lived for centuries, and to which in all probability, they have belonged since history began. If all the Siddiquis, Qureshis, Faruqis, ... have foreign origins and their forefathers accompanied the invading armies, or followed them, what happens to the solemn averment that Islam spread peacefully in India? Are we expected to believe that local converts, whose number must have been formidable, were all nincompoops and the wretched of the earth—incapable over long centuries of producing any leaders, thinkers, or scholars?

Reading about the genome sequencing and the unique genetic markers that are said to have been found to identify inner-most Pakistaniyat, I was somehow reminded of the above.  

What he is referring to is this news that Pakistan has sequenced its first genome:

“Our nation is a mix of a lot of races,” said Prof. Dr M Iqbal Choudhary, who heads the project. “Pakistanis are like a “melting pot” ie a mix of Mughals, Turks, Pashtuns, Afghans, Arabs, etcetera.”
{No Indian component?} 

“According to the researchers, the newly sequenced Pakistani genome has uncovered a multitude of Pakistan-specific sites which can now be used in the design of large-scale studies that are better suited for the Pakistani population,” said Dr Choudhary, who is the director of the International Centre for Chemical and Biological Sciences at Karachi University."

The Delhi Muslim Proposals

Source: The Indian Quarterly Register vol 1 (1927)
New Digital Library of India.

This is the one time the Muslim League agreed to joint electorates but hedged with conditions.

Bangash: Ghosts of Partition

Yaqoob Khan Bangash, Chairperson of the History Department at Forman Christian College Lahore ,  writes in the Tribune

Every country’s Independence Day is a defining moment in its history. The events of the day are the culmination of years of struggle and the day hearkens to a new beginning. The same is true for Pakistan, except that we have yet to move on from our ‘1947’ moment. This is not because historians keep writing about it but that in our collective memory, we still have to reconcile with the events of 1947 and move forward. Let me highlight just a few aspects.

The secular Pakistan narrative

Pakistani liberals place a great emphasis on the vision that Jinnah presented to the Constituent Assembly of the newly formed state of Pakistan on August 11, 1947.  It seems only natural, until one looks even a little deeper.  I hope in a series of posts to raise questions, and I invite all readers to participate in seeking the answers to these questions.

Pakistan has not implemented Jinnah's idea as expressed in that August 11, 1947 speech during the last sixty years, and general public opinion seems to be in favor of strict Shariat law. How will the use of Jinnah's speech change minds now?