Author: Sanjoy Hazarika
Publication: The Telegraph
Date: September 16, 2008
URL: http://www.telegraphindia.com/1080916/jsp/opinion/story_9836995.jsp
The Centre needs more pragmatic policies to
deal with the influx of Bangladeshi migrants into the north-eastern states
A high court judgment on illegal migrants
from Bangladesh has once again raised the thorny issue of influx into the
Northeast, especially into Assam, where it has always been a sensitive matter.
Underscoring the scale and the depth of the problem, which has been troubling
Assam and other north-eastern states for decades - and has now created challenges
in places as distant as Mumbai, Jaipur and New Delhi - the Guwahati High Court
has declared that illegal Bangladeshis "have a major role in electing
the representatives. They have become the kingmakers". The basis of this
statement is not clear, but it may have been arrived at from various media
reports and from the fact that a Bangladeshi actually stood for elections
to the Assam state assembly in the Nineties, or even from the general view
prevailing in Assam that the Muslim vote holds the key to nearly one-third
of the state's 126 assembly constituencies. This is, in turn, interpolated
to mean that Bangladeshis are in a majority or are critical to the vote in
these constituencies - they often blur the line between indigenous Muslims,
who speak both Assamese and Bengali and have lived in Assam for generations
(and are bona fide Indian citizens), and those who came to the state after
the creation of Bangladesh in 1971.
Much confusion arises from these issues. B.K.
Sharma, a judge of the Guwahati High Court, spoke of the need for strong political
will to tackle the situation and also of how easy it is to gain virtual citizenship
and outmanoeuvre the police as well as the legal processes. The ruling - which
came up in a case when the court dismissed appeals by 49 persons, who had
challenged a tribunal finding that they were Bangladeshis and should be deported
- has triggered an outburst against Bangladeshis, perceived or real. A surge
of activism has been reported against alleged foreign nationals and there
are allegations that minorities have been harassed after being labelled as
Bangladeshis.
Vigilantism is no answer to such a crisis:
it can exacerbate local tensions and play into the hands of political groups,
especially of the Right, which seek to exploit such confrontations. It is
important that not a single Indian citizen is discriminated against on the
basis of religion, ethnicity or background. Detection and deportation have
to be done by the agencies of the State in consonance with law, although public
frustration on the issue and the failure of the State over nearly 30 years
are understandable.
Assam is a complex ethnic mix, not only does
it have a wide range of tribes but it is also home to different Muslim groups,
just as it has "indigenous" Sikhs and Buddhists. The division among
the Muslims is three-way: the older Assamese speakers who have strong affinities
with the Assamese Hindu majority; the Bengali-origin Muslims, many of whom
speak Assamese as their own language and have lived in Assam for decades;
and the Bangladeshi immigrants, who have been coming to Assam since 1971,
when East Pakistan broke away from West Pakistan in the War of Liberation.
While political and public antagonism is largely focused at the last group,
confusion sets in at times because of the rhetoric that calls for the expulsion
of "all Bangladeshis", without making any difference between the
pre-1971 group and those who came afterward.
Indeed, Muslim populations in six districts
of Assam - Dhubri, Goalpara, Kokrajhar, Bongaigaon, Barpeta and Nalbari -
have surged. Migration is a major factor here; so are high fertility rates,
combined with poverty, poor education levels, low health access and family
planning measures. These high-growth districts were carved out of the older
districts of Goalpara and Kamrup, where there have been extensive settlement
of Muslims in the pre-Independence era. According to the 2001 census, Assam's
Hindu population has grown at 14.95 per cent against 29.30 per cent for the
Muslims. The figure was far higher between the Sixties and the Eighties, when
large numbers migrated to and settled in Assam.
The powerful All Assam Students' Union, which
first brought the issue to national and international attention in 1979, says
the state and Central governments have failed to protect Assam from "external
aggression and internal disturbance". Aasu's ire is also directed at
the Asom Gana Parishad, which emerged from its womb in 1985, and also at the
Left: all are guilty, it says, of supporting the influx because they are dependent
on these votes, and also because they support cheap labour.
Conflicting figures float around as to the
number of "Bangladeshis" in Assam, as well as in India. But there
is little doubt that there are no less than 20 lakh illegal migrants in Assam
(a figure extrapolated from fertility rates and demographic growth of different
religious groups), with a majority being Muslim. This is a substantial number,
about seven per cent of Assam's total population of 30 million. It is also
larger than the populations of small states such as Mizoram, Nagaland and
Arunachal Pradesh in the Northeast, which comes to a total of 40 million.
The overall figures for illegal migrants in India is said to be not less than
20 million. Some assert that this is a conservative figure.
Yet, development and the potential of conflict
and violence are intertwined. If the state and Central governments do not
wake up to the abysmal human development index levels in Lower Assam (and
that covers both tribals like the Bodos, groups like Koch-Rajbongshis, as
well as Muslims), the populations there - Bangladeshi or not -may be tempted
to align with groups that are inimical to the interests of Assam and also
of India. It is in our short- and long-term security interests to bridge service
delivery gaps. This is the soft underbelly of the Northeast and of India,
a 4,000-km belt that stretches from the narrow foot of Mizoram that plunges
into the tri-junction of India, Bangladesh and Myanmar, up to the Sunderbans
and the Bay of Bengal. The issue today is not that there are a large number
of illegal migrants in India. The question, more importantly, is what can
be done about them.
For 30 years, various movements in Assam have
demanded vigorous action against immigrants. Although a national concern,
the issue gets little more attention than a district problem. Bangladesh conveniently
declares, on the one hand, that none of its nationals migrate to poor countries
like India (of course, they only work as street-cleaners and waiters in the
United States of America and Europe!) and, on the other, through its founding
father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, proclaims that the "fertile lands"
of Assam are a Lebensraum for its people, who now are packed at 1,400 persons
per square kilometre, the highest population density in the world. Despite
the Assam Accord of 1985 after the student-led movement against Bangladeshis,
the number of those ousted is barely a few thousand. There are several reasons
for this, the predominant one being that Bangladesh denies that any of its
nationals slip into India illegally. Thus, the shrillness of the campaigns
against Bangladeshis fails to turn up specific answers. Even a Bharatiya Janata
Party-led coalition failed to do anything about deportation. It is better,
in my view, to develop a three point action plan that has the support of all
political parties and groups instead of continuing to agitate without end
or put off a decision for as long as possible, as the government is doing
now.
Provide constitutional guarantees to enable
political control of the state and its future by ensuring reservations of
not less than 65 per cent for all local ethnic groups in perpetuity. There
is no need to quibble over what constitutes an "Assamese" - provide
the protected status to all recognized scheduled tribes, scheduled castes,
other backward classes and to general citizens who are voters, but who can
also be traced through the 1951 National Register of Citizens matched with
the 1971 electoral lists. It is here that the definition of Asom-bashis (residents
of Assam) by the United Liberation Front of Assom becomes maybe more appropriate
than Asomiyas - efforts to define the latter has tied governments and organizations
up in knots for decades.
Back this up by issuing multi-purpose identity
cards to all who qualify under the process and then provide temporary work
permits to those of Bangladeshi-origin who are already here. The TWPs would
not be a license to settle down, but only provide access to work and incomes
for a fixed time, as in a visa regime - one year to start with, to be extended
to a second but non-extendable further - since the northeast region is a labour-strapped
area, constantly depending on labour from Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Bangladesh.
The TWPs could be issued to groups of not more than 25. The individuals in
the groups could be identified through software that gives each person a unique
identity through finger-printing and eye detection.
An alternative to the TWP, and a simpler one,
is to develop a separate category of identity cards, as proposed by Prakash
Singh, an eminent police official, with a different colour coding for Bangladeshi/foreign
nationals.
It is better to temper rhetoric with research
and realism and develop "implementable" policy approaches instead
of continuing to live either in denial or repeating the story of the past
30 years. Far too much time has passed, and too many lives have been expended.
