Population Census
Data Collection A Great Challenge

By Ganesh Shakya

THE 10th National Population Census is starting from 10th of June, 2001. The first population census in Nepal was conducted in the year 1911. Since then it is being carried out every ten years. The last population census was carried out in 1991.

Significance

Population census has it’s own significance. First of all, it is a big and expensive national project which needs plenty of resources like time, manpower and the budget. Furthermore, the statistics as collected in the census are the basic information for planning the entire socio-economic development segments of the country. The researchers, policy makers and the planners have to play with such data for a long period of time i.e. for a decade. Therefore, the outcome of the census must be result-oriented and should be an important input to the country to form successful and sustainable plans and programmes.

It is not only an expensive project but also a challenging task for the nation to conduct the census. For planners and policy makers, data is the only basic source to determine the sectorial development priority. In accurate data create problems in the entire development process of the country. Hence, the concerned organisation should be well prepared to get accurate data from the respondents.

According to the Secretariat of the Population Census, all the necessary preparation has been made for the census. Special attention has been given while developing the questionaire and some changes were made in order to check the repetition of the weakness that had been witnessed in past censuses. After consulting with different related agencies, the questionnaire were pre-tested in Dhankuta, Mahotari, Kathmandu and Bajura districts.

Like in the past, the same "Modified De Jure Method" is to be used for data collection in this 10th population census too. According to this method, information is collected from each and every household. The preliminary work like listing and indexing of the households has already been initiated from last 14th of May.

The biggest problem associated with survey work is to collect accurate data. The most important thing is to get correct answer to the question asked by the enumerator which is not possible without a keen cooperation of the respondents. Therefore, the respondents are the key persons of the survey.

Problems abound right from the respondents. First of all, most of them do not understand the value and meaning of census. So, they don’t want or can not provide the correct information. Those who understand the value do not show the interest. They try as far as possible to escape from the enumerators. Those who responds to the questions also hide certain facts for fear of unveiling their privacy and some provide false information. We have also another bitter experience that some of them leave the question incomplete and go away from the enumerators.

In most of the rural areas, people are found not being interested to respond to the surveyors. Their interest have been killed because they have had responded many people from different sectors and they have not found any benefit . In fact, they want immediate and direct returns irrespective of the long term impact of the study.

Whether one admits or not, these, situation are conspicious in our society. The major constraint behind this critical situation is lack of education. A long and tedious question, dealing with unskilled enumerators and the over confusing questions are another technical constrains.

Another problem of the census is associated with lack of the skilled manpower. Enumerators play a significant role in the census because they are the only manpower who work in the field and directly deal with the respondents. The collection of data whether true or false completely depends upon them. A simple mistake or negligence censes a big harm to the nation.

In past censuses, many comments were made against the enumerators. Mainly being fillings the forms in a room or under a tree and filling the forms with data whatever appeared in their mind were the major comments. These type of action should not be repeated in the coming sensus. For this, each respondent must be careful and sensitive. A careful and frequent supervision is equally important in order to check the misleading. Above all, the enumerators are highly expected to be an honest, dedicated and committed to their duties and responsibilities.

The media has reflected that different organisations have shown their interest to this census. Mostly, the organisations related to religious groups and the ethnic groups have been found more interested in this matter. They had organised different meetings, talk programmes, interaction programmes with an aim to urge the concerned people to cooperate the field workers. Of course, such type of endeavour will sure helps collect the correct information.

It has also been learnt from the media that the Secretariat is using sample count in this census in addition to full count method. The data which are difficult to estimate and highly essential, information will be collected in full count method and the rest information will be collected on sample count method. Statistically, census is a complete enumeration process of the object in the universe. Therefore, sample count should not be introduced. But, the secretariat justified it with the past experience that there was no distinct difference between preliminary estimates and the actual data after processing.

Challenges

These are some great challenges associated with data collection procedure that government has to come up with the necessary strategies to address such challenges. For result oriented outcome, all the respondents should provide correct and complete information without hiding anything and whether the information they have given are correctly filled up or not in the form. It helps preventing the data manipulation by the enumerators and also checks the wrong entry. The enumerators should also use their inteligentsia so that they could obtain clear and the complete information from the respondents. Finally, all the people concerned should take the big national project as their own project and do their duties without any selfishness.

Hurdles To Housing

By Shanker K.C.

HOUSING has never been the priority of His Majesty’s Government of Nepal, in the sense that there have never been any comprehensive and concrete programmes to address the existing housing problems in the urban as well as rural areas. However, if we look at the institutional side the Department of Housing and Urban Development and Rural Housing and Resettlement Company have been in existence for more than three decades. For the Kathmandu Valley there are institutions like Kathmandu Valley Development Committee and its implementing committees, metropolitan and sub metropolitan authorities. Their functions are directly or indirectly related to solving the land and housing problems in the valley.

The Ministry of Housing and Physical Planning was established in the year 1987 with special objectives of delivering housing to urban as well as rural populace of the country. This ministry has however, recently been recognized and renamed as Ministry of Physical Planning and Works. This also suggests the policy shift of HMG in regard to housing policy and housing delivery.

The then Ministry of Housing and Physical Planning and United Nations Center for Human Settlement launched a project in 1988 to prepare the shelter sector background report. Out of that study came a very rudimentary housing policy, which was adopted by the HMG in 2053 B.S. in hasty preparation for Habitat conference held in Istanbul, Turkey in 1996. However, no comprehensive follow-up actions have been taken towards the implementation of the policies.

Often it is argued that housing problem in Nepal is not very serious as in many other third world countries. It has been supposed that in rural Nepal this problem is not very serious as people in the rural areas have at least accesses to basic shelter. In urban areas also it is true to certain extent that we do not have problems like Kolkata or Mumbay in India or Sao Paulo in Brazil. But that is because historically our urbanisation rate has remained low. However, this situation is gradually changing as urban population is growing very rapidly in recent years. Growing squatter settlements, substandard and overcrowded housing condition and ever growing homeless population in rural as well as urban areas indicate the severity of shelter problems in urban Nepal.

Especially in the Kathmandu Valley, not only for the poor, but also for many middle class households, housing has become unaffordable. This situation will further worsen, as urban population will grow in the future. It is already late for the government to remain complacent about the growing problems of urban housing. However, government involvement should not mean that it becomes directly involved in providing housing stocks or engage in land development activities.

Experiences from many developing countries in producing low cost housing for the low income people by government have proved disastrous from the viewpoint of replication, cost recovery as well as affordability, which are very important for success of any housing programmes. In Nepalese context also, involvement of the Kathmandu Valley Town Development Committee in few sites and services projects and other land development activities has proved very inadequate as well as unsuccessful.

Housing policy of HMG must thus move from its previously narrow scope, which focused on engagement of government in the direct production of residential land development and low cost housing to provide efficient environment for private sector involvement in housing sector. Traditionally housing has been regarded as unproductive sector for investment, so involvement of private sector was discouraged. However, this thinking is gradually changing over the years. Mobilisation of private sector resources in the housing is no longer regarded as unproductive. Housing construction provide employment opportunities for large number of unskilled as well as skilled labor force and it also gives boost to construction sector industries like bricks, cement, concrete etc.

The basic question is how government can mobilise private sector involvement in housing sector. In Nepal number of land development companies already exists whose resources, creativeness and enthusiasm can be mobilised for the residential land and housing development. However, their activities have mainly remained informal because there is no regulatory planning framework to guide their activities, which have contributed to haphazard growth in suburban regions. Bringing them under basic regulatory and planning framework will contribute to more rational and planned urban development and increase the supply of residential land plots which will eventually contribute to lowering the price of land thus increasing the affordability.

However, many responsible private sector investors are hesitating to come in this sector due to various constraints such as restrictive land ceiling, problems in land assembling, conflicting property rights because of dual ownership of land, archaic and antiquated land records etc. These problems should be addressed and appropriate amendments should be made in related rules and regulations to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of private sectors in housing and land development.

Involvement of formal private sector in housing and land development should be complemented by developing well functioning housing finance mechanism. In Nepal, at present housing finance is very much undeveloped. Private finance companies should come with creative and innovative mechanism for providing greater access to housing finance for all income groups.

Time has come for the government to realise that its limited intervention in land market is not going to address the growing housing problems in urban areas, so it should work towards creating better environment for the functioning of private sector.