The National Register of Citizens (NRC) is the biggest circus Indian politics has ever seen. After passing the Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB), the entire nation is up in protests. The idea, intention, and implementation of NRC and CAB are flawed to the core. Overemphasis on the documents in a country which has failed to even provide proper Voter ID card till now is a joke. The government doesn’t know what will happen next to the people excluded in NRC or even the Foreign Tribunals. The government has no answer to it. The NRC is a futile exercise that should not be implemented nationwide considering the vastness and volume of India. The government spent between 1200 crores to 1600 crores (different estimates) for a population as small as Assam. Imagine the burden it will have on the exchequer if expanded nationwide. They leave us with any questions and leave everyone wondering about the future of the people excluded or rejected from NRC.
The BJP wanted to control the NRC exercise to suit its vote-bank politics and the larger goal of a Hindu Rashtra. The entire narrative that the exercise is done to identify illegal immigrants is a big sham. The government conveniently garnered the support of both the houses to pass the Citizenship Amendment Act which allows Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, Sikh, Parsis, and Christian from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh to become citizens of India. This only leaves one community, i.e. Muslim, that needs to worry. The ruling government argues that it seeks to protect the religious minority in neighbouring countries, i.e. Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan. The argument sounds noble but ignoring the plight of Rohingyas in Myanmar or Uyghurs in China shows the glaring bias. It would have been better to tell the Muslim community on what will be done to them if they are not found in the NRC rather than wasting so much time and energy for establishing the entire nation’s document. The amount of expenditure that will be incurred on its nationwide implementation needs to be calculated along with the current economic crisis in the country. The only problem BJP has had is the busting of its hyped myth about the presence of an exaggerated number of Muslim immigrants in Assam as the recent findings suggested it is majorly, the Hindu community who are present. This list isn’t full of Muslims, as it had hoped, but has Bengali Hindus, Nepalis and even some from the indigenous Assamese tribes as perhaps they did not have the mandatory paperwork. Therefore, the BJP brought out a dangerous instrument (CAA) to further its majoritarian politics.
How does the government plan to implement it?
Let us assume that the government comes up with a long list of people who do not have documents in NRC; there are specific gaps in how that will be achieved. There will be three categories of people after NRC exercise; first, people who were excluded and will approach tribunals. So how the government plans to deal with so many court cases? Second, people who got convicted to detention centres. How many detention centres does the government plan to
build? And third are the people who will migrate to a different part of the country instead of filing for inclusion. How does the government plan to hunt them down on such a large scale?
Does the government have answers to these questions?
Focusing on the second category of people- one of the main reasons for such a massive exercise. Let us assume that the government is able to find out the list of illegal immigrants in the country and have identified, arrested them. What will the government do? Will they send them to camps? If yes, then how many and where have the camps been built. How will their basic needs like food, medical and clothing be provided for? Is the incumbent government willing to take such a big risk to satisfy their goals? Migrants also have human rights including, security to life and livelihood as well as freedom from fear and so despite being foreigners; they must be given security. How will the law and order situation be maintained? It’s essential to understand how the camps in Germany or Gulag were maintained – “Fear and torture”. Will the government in this democratically advanced society take those extreme measures to control people in these camps and how much cost does it require to maintain those camps?
The government currently has no policy for the stateless person right now. What will the newly dispossessed do? Will Bangladesh take any back? Will some join extremists groups and create havoc in the country? The government constantly maintains its statement on NRC being an internal matter, so how does the government plan to send these people out of India when Bangladesh has outrightly refused to accept any illegal immigrants from Bangladesh to India.
The government has passed an Act with its political might, and we know “why” this Act has been passed. But now the government needs to move beyond this, and the opposition needs to ask the “How” of it. Merely saying India will have no illegal immigrants is not enough, Home Minister Amit Shah should also tell us how he plans to move forward, or is this another blunder the Modi government is headed on to. Haven’t we had enough of blunders to deal with? Shouldn’t we deal with the mess on our plates first, rather than creating an unending vicious cycle?
