CAA, NRIC and the uncertain climate

We are going through a crisis over the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the National Register of Indian Citizens (NRIC). There is a lot of confusion and one fears such confusion might degenerate into chaos, loss of lives and damage to property, besides the loss of productive time that is happening already. Broadly, three groups are protesting: The first is against inclusion of illegal migrants; the second against exclusion; and the third against discriminatory inclusion.
 
Protesters in Assam belong to the first group; they fear they would be saddled with over 12 million primarily Hindu refugees as citizens. The rest-of-India-protests are in two groups. One thinks that our Constitution, which espouses secularism, is now compromised because of the CAA and therefore, CAA allows discriminatory inclusion. The third group raises the more serious concern regarding the NRIC. For a country that is notorious about record keeping, this burden of proof on the residents is going to make many Indians, especially the poor, illegal. However, while a non-Muslim will have a high chance of eventually being accepted as an Indian citizen, the same is not true for Muslims without “appropriate documents”. This is the exclusion argument. However, India needs to be future ready and arguments against migrants have to be stronger than what it is currently.
 
Economic argument against immigration, legal or otherwise, has two parts to it: One, the argument of scarce resources, and the other, competition in the labour market. For an emerging economy where many of the "legitimate citizens" are deprived of basic welfare schemes, the scarce resources will be stretched further if more dependents are added. This was why Aadhaar was emphasised -- to prevent leakages. Dealing with refugees necessitates proper use of Aadhaar, the way it was meant to be. The labour market argument seems rather bizarre given that most of the jobs that illegal migrants manage to bag are the informal sector jobs that are not the ideal benchmark of jobs to base critical policy decisions.
 
The next set of arguments is based on voting rights. The accusations regarding "vote bank politics" are particularly severe when it comes to certain states that share international border with Bangladesh. How will CAA and the supposed NRIC solve this? If every person who has a valid voter card is included in the NRIC, then those who are voting now and yet should not have that right, will continue to do so. The only way to address this problem would be to perhaps draw up an entirely new citizenship criteria, not with retrospective effect but with a cut-off on the date of a relevant enactment coming into force. Then the argument of harassment of many Indians, especially the poor and the marginal, irrespective of faith, does not exist.

United Voices Broadly, three groups are protesting: The first is against inclusion of illegal migrants; the second against exclusion; and the third against discriminatory inclusion

 
While there is no clarity as to how NRIC will be implemented or funded, the bigger question that goes a-begging is what should be India’s policy towards migrants and refugees. It is pertinent to note that India is not a signatory to the UN Refugee Convention, 1951, and the Protocol of 1967, and that displacement in India and its neighbourhood will, in all likelihood, rise manifold due to extreme coastal water levels (ECWL) exacerbated by global warming.
 
Irrespective of models used to assess global and national population exposures to ECWL, it is estimated that millions of people would be vulnerable by the year 2100, and nearly half as many by mid-century, under high greenhouse gas emissions scenario (RCP 8.5). Even for RCP 4.5, sea levels projected by 2050 are high enough to threaten land, currently home to millions, to a future permanently below the high tide line. Call these migrants or refugees, millions of these are sure to find their way into India given its geographical size and the size of the economy.
 
Lost in this mayhem is the most crucial issue of refugees and illegal immigration. A closer look at the issue suggests that the appropriate policy to handle refugees may not be a simple binary of exclusion versus inclusion. This could also be an opportunity to address the issue of imminent sea-level-rise-induced displacement.
 
Global warming is causing the sea level to rise and is displacing hundreds of thousands annually in Bangladesh. It is fair to assume that by the middle of the century, many of them will swarm our borders and eventually perhaps enter India. The estimates of "climate refugees" will run into millions. What are we to do then? It is unconceivable that India will absorb a major portion of these refugees irrespective of their religion. Should we not be preparing ourselves to deal with the impending situation collectively with our neighbours and the global community? Rather than the binary of inclusion versus exclusion, we could have thought of a transit status for the illegal migrants. That would have paved a leadership position for us to determine how the world must share the burden of such climate refugees. Sadly, as the current narrative goes back and forth between those pro- and those anti-CAA-NRIC, the opportunity to take leadership on a looming crisis is being lost.

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Danda is with Observer Research Foundation, Kolkata; Mukhopadhyay is with Great Lakes Institute of Management, Gurgaon