NRC across India | Behind the rhetoric lie deep challenges

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Faced with the undeniable reality of an economic slowdown, growing unemployment and shrinking consumption, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government seems keen on focusing on the party’s political goals, such as Ayodhya, the Uniform Civil Code, Jammu and Kashmir, and the National Register of Citizens (NRC).

The party has ‘delivered’ to its core voters on Ayodhya and Kashmir, and the Uniform Civil Code too is within its reach as the BJP enjoys majority in Parliament. However, it is the NRC where the party has faltered and tied itself up in knots. The BJP’s refusal to accept the Supreme Court-monitored NRC in Assam while at the same time promising a national-wide NRC shows it's double standards.

The SC-monitored NRC has left out nearly 2 million people in Assam, at least half of them Bengali-speaking Hindus, upsetting the BJP’s plans of citing the NRC’s success in Assam as an example during the assembly election campaigns in West Bengal, which goes to the polls in 2021.

At its core, an NRC is a reasonable idea; after all a country ought to know how many citizens it has. However, the adage ‘intent is everything’ underpins an exercise like the NRC. While replying to a question in the Lok Sabha, Home Minister and BJP President Amit Shah said that the NRC will be implemented across India, and it will be repeated in Assam. The BJP’s demand to repeat the NRC is repugnant because it overlooks the severe hardship, trauma and loss of life the people of Assam have suffered once already.

What seems to be missing from the critique of the NRC is an assessment of whether we even have the required wherewithal for such an exercise. The implementation of the NRC requires the use of the state government’s machinery and human resources, and, given this, for the time being Shah’s claim of a nationwide NRC appears to be more for the headlines.

The governments in West Bengal and Kerala have already opposed the announcement, the Congress has opposed a second NRC in Assam and is of the view that under existing laws an NRC across India is not possible. All this comes at a time when the government is facing several crises: India is facing an economic slowdown and the government’s efforts to rescue it are not inspiring confidence: A latest example of this is its denial of NSO data on the unprecedented shrinking of consumption across rural and urban India.

Implementing the NRC across India requires adequate human and physical infrastructure. It needs government staff to conduct awareness campaigns and identification drives, but most importantly it needs police personnel, free legal aid for those who need representation and finally, judges to adjudicate citizenship claims. Let’s take a few states where the BJP is in power, either on its own or with allies.

According to a recent study, the India Justice Report, in Uttar Pradesh, for instance, vacancies in the police are the highest in the country — 53 per cent in the constabulary, and 63 per cent at the officer level. The situation in Bihar and Haryana is no better, with police vacancies averaging upwards of 30 per cent against ranks. In Karnataka, one in every five constable posts remains vacant, and in Goa officer level vacancies hover at 20 per cent.

Vacancies in the high courts of these states are all upwards of 33 per cent, which means one in three sanctioned judge positions have not been filled. In Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh this figure is at about 50 per cent, which implies the workload on a judge is nearly twice what it should be. Further, nearly 40 per cent of cases in the lower courts of UP and Bihar have been pending for more than five years.

The point is that the government ought to have considered all these facts, if it has not, before making a statement that a nation-wide NRC will be carried out. As seen from the NRC experience in Assam, such a national exercise could be a nightmare for religious minorities, oppressed and underprivileged sections across the nation. Given this, it appears that a main aim of the BJP’s announcement is to make the NRC a poll issue in West Bengal before the elections there. Beyond Bengal, the NRC ought to remain a pipe dream and at best a handy distraction from core bread-and-butter issues that face the country.

Valay Singh is a freelance journalist. Views expressed personal.