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Row over NPR

Row over NPR

Ceaseless crackdowns and counter propaganda are running counter to any reconciliation moves on identity politics

The Government may want us to believe that the compilation of the National Population Register (NPR) of citizens is just another statistical census drive but the fears it has generated are real. Simply because the anxieties fuelled by the identity politics behind the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the National Register of Citizens (NRC) are still raw but the new announcement is hardly a balm. Other things have not helped either — the massive and brutal crackdown on protesters in Uttar Pradesh (thousands at last count), the projection of vandals as destroyers of State property, the loot in the name of recovering damages from identified arsonists and the ghettoised nature of such operations. Simultaneously, the pictures of ready to move in detention camps in Karnataka by news agencies have blasted holes in the official line that there had been no discussion on NRC or that such centres were non-existent. And when institutions like the Army, too, are coopted to justify the neo-nationalist narrative of the Government, when they should be non-partisan, there is more than reason to worry. And though the country may be awash with some hope for the new year, it certainly doesn’t want a bad joke. Looks like the Government just doesn’t want to simmer down but cap the lava flowing underneath. Even silent sympathisers at protest rallies are being rounded up to muzzle India’s biggest civil dissent.

There are some areas of concern though as the NPR has provisioned for a new entry on parents’ ancestry, origins and legacy. And a sub-clause does provide for an NRC. Which is why there are real fears that the data is being clandestinely harvested for what the regime in the end wants to tick off, namely delivering the NRC. The Government may trace this exercise as a continuity of the legacy of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) regime. But the UPA had in 2010 limited implementation of the 2003 rules to prepare an NPR and never followed it up with an NRC. The NRC rules were framed in 2005. Rule 3 of the Citizenship (Registration of Citizens and Issue of National Identity Cards) Rules, 2003, under which the NPR process has been notified, mentions NRIC in the title and even suggests sub categories. Pending clarifications on privacy of data or that it would not be used for any other purpose, the grey areas will always remain. Besides, the speed at which this is being pushed belies any counter propaganda about the Government’s good intentions. Given the magnitude of civil disobedience and now an array of Chief Ministers refusing to cooperate in the process of NPR, the obduracy of persisting with identity politics portends a chaotic future. Already wild suggestions like furnishing fake information during tabulation are doing the rounds. And civil non-cooperation can be a bigger disruptor in a nation’s history than State force.

(Courtesy: The Pioneer)

Row over NPR

Row over NPR

Ceaseless crackdowns and counter propaganda are running counter to any reconciliation moves on identity politics

The Government may want us to believe that the compilation of the National Population Register (NPR) of citizens is just another statistical census drive but the fears it has generated are real. Simply because the anxieties fuelled by the identity politics behind the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the National Register of Citizens (NRC) are still raw but the new announcement is hardly a balm. Other things have not helped either — the massive and brutal crackdown on protesters in Uttar Pradesh (thousands at last count), the projection of vandals as destroyers of State property, the loot in the name of recovering damages from identified arsonists and the ghettoised nature of such operations. Simultaneously, the pictures of ready to move in detention camps in Karnataka by news agencies have blasted holes in the official line that there had been no discussion on NRC or that such centres were non-existent. And when institutions like the Army, too, are coopted to justify the neo-nationalist narrative of the Government, when they should be non-partisan, there is more than reason to worry. And though the country may be awash with some hope for the new year, it certainly doesn’t want a bad joke. Looks like the Government just doesn’t want to simmer down but cap the lava flowing underneath. Even silent sympathisers at protest rallies are being rounded up to muzzle India’s biggest civil dissent.

There are some areas of concern though as the NPR has provisioned for a new entry on parents’ ancestry, origins and legacy. And a sub-clause does provide for an NRC. Which is why there are real fears that the data is being clandestinely harvested for what the regime in the end wants to tick off, namely delivering the NRC. The Government may trace this exercise as a continuity of the legacy of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) regime. But the UPA had in 2010 limited implementation of the 2003 rules to prepare an NPR and never followed it up with an NRC. The NRC rules were framed in 2005. Rule 3 of the Citizenship (Registration of Citizens and Issue of National Identity Cards) Rules, 2003, under which the NPR process has been notified, mentions NRIC in the title and even suggests sub categories. Pending clarifications on privacy of data or that it would not be used for any other purpose, the grey areas will always remain. Besides, the speed at which this is being pushed belies any counter propaganda about the Government’s good intentions. Given the magnitude of civil disobedience and now an array of Chief Ministers refusing to cooperate in the process of NPR, the obduracy of persisting with identity politics portends a chaotic future. Already wild suggestions like furnishing fake information during tabulation are doing the rounds. And civil non-cooperation can be a bigger disruptor in a nation’s history than State force.

(Courtesy: The Pioneer)

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