A week-long countrywide census on slum now underway, according to the authorities, is meant for planning better for the welfare of slum-dwellers in the country. There should not be any complaint if a census really becomes instrumental in changing life of these hapless people for the better. But the troubling question is, why should a separate census be required for them? Aren't they citizens of Bangladesh? If they are, the national census should have well covered them. In this digital era, in particular, it is quite possible to glean all possible information required for any well-intended purpose. If the national census is carried out properly and the national identity card project covers all citizens, there is no reason why information will not be sufficient about any person living in a slum or in a palace.
It is exactly for this reason, a national data bank should be built up in order to know about anyone just by a few clicks on the computer screen. Centrally stored the pool of information gives an exact picture of the demography and all the related facts and figures necessary for a particular purpose. The fact remains that the census is not even reasonably perfect let alone 100 per cent correct. What goes amiss is the seriousness on the part of enumerators and supervisors at the field level to visit every house and gather information about every household. There is no guarantee that this census on slum will be any better in this respect. At least slum people are easily reachable but the same cannot be said about the floating people. Still methods can be developed in order to cover all people unless of course people themselves do not try to mislead the enumerators. Even then such deceit or duplicity can be detected if extra care is taken to decipher such acts. And that exactly should be one of the purposes to carry out any census -whether a national or a limited one like that on the slum.
The pattern of demography is best reflected if genuine information can be gathered through painstaking efforts. Study groups or non-government voluntary organisations (NGOs) focus on certain issues through random surveys or interviews. If the facts are well documented, certain behaviour or living condition of a particular class can be authentically pictured. Bangladesh is a country where NGOs have been operating for decades but apart from a few comprehensive studies on slums, urban poverty did not figure rather prominently. Yet those few studies have pinpointed where things go wrong. River erosion, pulls and pushes from different actors and forces compel poor villagers to take shelter in slums run on the basis of a complex set of rules beyond the control of the country's existing laws. Thus slums have become the breeding grounds of crime. Unless crimes can be rooted out, no effort aimed at ameliorating the condition of inhabitants there will be successful. The on-going census will be of help if it undertakes this challenge.
Let census on slums serve a meaningful purpose
FE Team | Published: April 28, 2014 00:00:00 | Updated: November 30, 2026 06:01:00
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