The numbers game

People living in strife-torn Jaffna are demanding that the region be excluded from Sri Lanka's first census in 20 years. Nirupama Subramanian on the issues involved.

ON JULY 17 this year, an army of 100,000 men and women will fan out all over Sri Lanka on a mammoth operation. Armed with questionnaires, they will call at every home, bus stop, railway station and bazaar, and stop people on the streets, even beggars and the homeless, to ask 25 seemingly innocuous questions about their age, the size of their families, their marital status, their religion and their ethnic affiliation. The replies will form the substance of Sri Lanka's 13th national census, and its first after a gap of two decades.

Although a census was due in 1991, it was deemed unfeasible then due to the escalation of the ethnic conflict in northeast Sri Lanka and the armed insurgency in the south which had been put down with a brutal hand just a year previously.

Given the long gap, the 2001 census has assumed added urgency. The Census and Statistics Department has asked the Government to declare a half-holiday on the day, and to restrict public transport, so that the job of the enumerators is made easier.

But not everyone wants to be part of this vital document that will provide a long overdue demographic profile of Sri Lanka. People living in the strife-torn Tamil-dominated northern district of Jaffna, that has been affected by large-scale displacement and migration over the last two decades, are demanding that the region be excluded from the census.

``We must not have a census here till peace and normality are restored. It will not provide an accurate picture of the district,'' parliamentarian and leader of the Eelam People's Democratic Party (EPDP), Mr. Douglas Devananda, recently told a group of journalists visiting Jaffna Peninsula.

A census could determine crucial issues such as development resource allocation and also quotas for university education. By making official what is only informally known about the depletion of the population in Jaffna, it is feared that the census could become a handy tool for discrimination against the district by Colombo.

The main concern is that an enumeration of the population of Jaffna could drastically cut the number of MPs from the peninsula. In fact, that has already happened. The number of MPs representing the district has already been cut from 10 in the 1994 general elections to nine in the present parliament for which elections were held in 2000.

There is apprehension that if the present population becomes an official statistic, the number could come down by as much as half, weakening whatever clout mainstream Tamil parties wield in Parliament at present.

The population of Jaffna since the time it came under the control of the Government in 1996 has hovered under five lakhs. Of these, many thousands fled last year due to the sudden and dramatic escalation in the fighting between Government forces and the LTTE.

At the moment, it is estimated that about 4.5 lakh people live in the peninsula, compared to the 8.6 lakh population recorded in the 1981 census. Most have gone abroad, and many are living in other parts of the country including Colombo. The population of Jaffna has declined from around seven per cent to under two per cent of the total population of the country.

Nothing illustrates this depletion better than the island of Karainagar. Part of Jaffna district, it once had a population of 40,000. From 1991 to about 1996, it turned into a battlefield between the Sri Lanka Navy and the LTTE, leading to a massive exodus. There was a trickle back after the Navy established control on the entire island, and there are now about 6,000 people living there. The senior-most Government official in Karainagar has written to the Government Agent, the top civilian authority of the district, asking for a postponement of the census.

But social scientists disagree, arguing that whatever the reasons, it is important to record the changes in the population as this would be a vital tool in social and historical analysis. ``A census is a document that will determine the present population and certain other aspects relating to that population. The information is critical. If there have been changes in the population, we cannot brush them under the carpet or ignore them,'' said Professor S.Hettige, head of Colombo University's Centre for Sociological and Anthropological Studies. The enumeration would assist in understanding the events of the past and to project events in the future, he pointed out.

Officials said there were adequate safeguards in the census questionnaire that would address the concerns being raised about conducting an enumeration in the war-affected northeast.

Included in the 25 questions are four on migration: the district of birth, the district of usual residence, the duration of stay in the district of usual residence, and the district of present residence.

``With this, we can do a special tabulation that will take into account migration and displacement due to the war,'' said Mr. A.G.W. Nanayakkara, Director-General of the Census and Statistics department. The census will not include those who live abroad as citizens or permanent residents of those countries. There will be a special count of those abroad for employment, though they too will not be included in the final count.

Despite the protests in Jaffna, the first two stages of the census operations have already been completed, that is the preparation of maps of homes and buildings in every ``census block'', and pre-listing, in which each house has been marked with a red sticker. The preliminary census is to be conducted nation-wide between June 25 and July 5, while July 17 is the date for the final enumeration.

Surprisingly, there has been not a murmur against the enumeration in the area where opposition was most expected. Mr. Nanayakkara said that except for a small delay, the pre-listing operation was being carried out at present in LTTE-held northern Sri Lanka without a hitch, with the UNHCR providing logistical assistance.

Social scientists are eagerly awaiting the results of the census, which are certain to throw interesting light on the events in Sri Lanka, both the Sinhala-dominated south and the Tamil-dominated north, in the 20 years since the last census.

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