Let’s leave the right and wrong of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the National Register of Citizens (NCR) aside for a moment and let’s concentrate on what it means if these are implemented.
A bit of background first. As per what we have been hearing from the government, this process will help us identify illegal immigrants who will then be put in detention camps. Then what?
It is this question that should send chills down our collective spine. The last time a country did this, we ended up with what was termed by the perpetrators as the “final solution” and the rest of the world as the “holocaust”.
The Assamese people in particular and the others around the country in general see the CAA/NRC as this benign exercise that will identify illegal immigrants and which will end with these poor souls being sent back to their own countries, and lots of jobs for those left behind. But things are not that simple.
Let us take the case of Mr. X. His parents migrated to India from Bangladesh and he was born in India. X has had limited education and works as a daily wage worker at building construction sites. He is not eligible for a government job or any of the other high-end jobs to which the people who want to throw them out aspire. Furthermore, unlike the popular narrative, Mr. X is not a leech sucking from Indians services that should rightfully be theirs. Contrary to popular perception, Mr. X is a contributing member to the Indian economy. He works to earn a living and then spends the money he earns to buy goods, pay rent, avail services, etc. All of these activities mean that he is not a leech but an active member in the Indian economy. When Mr. X is faced by the CAA/NRC process, he cannot produce the required documents to prove that he is an Indian citizen. Remember, according to the NRC, just being born in India no longer makes you an Indian citizen.
Now let’s see what happens after he is identified as an illegal immigrant. First of all, he is put in a detention camp. In this camp, he has no way to earn a living and feed himself. So he must be fed by the government, which does so using our tax money. Furthermore, he needs to be guarded at all times, so we pay someone who could do something useful to instead watch this illegal immigrant. How is this guard paid? With our tax money.
Once in a detention center, this Indian born person cannot be deported to any other country. Remember, he is born in India and has no documentation showing that he lived anywhere else. So neither Bangladesh nor Afghanistan is going to allow India to send these people there. So he stays in the detention center. A productive life will meander into a wasted one. One spent waiting for a freedom that is never coming.
Now, if he is a Hindu, Sikh, or Christian, he can lie that he was persecuted in Pakistan, Afghanistan, or Bangladesh and on the basis of the CAA apply for naturalization in India. However, if he is a Muslim, there is no way out. He will be stuck in the detention center until hell freezes over since there is no way out of the deadlock. He has no papers to prove he is of Indian origin. None of the countries he is supposed to be from will take him.
Like other “big” policies of this government, this too is all about optics. India is going through an employment crisis on an unprecedented scale in our history. The government would have us believe that this is because of the Muslim Bangladeshi immigrants. Nothing could be further than the truth. The fact is that our economy has slowed down. While some of that slowdown can be blamed on global factors, demonetization and the bungled GST implementation have been major contributing factors too. Instead of looking at the root causes of the situation, the government seems hellbent on finding a scapegoat. The real question is, who is searching for the solution? A perfect example is how the Finance Minister blamed the slowdown in the automobile industry on millennials preferring to use Ola and Uber rather than buy their own vehicles.
Over time, like a self-fulfilling prophecy the illegal immigrant becomes a burden on Indian society. So what do we do then? Do we implement the final solution?
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