CAA, NRC and NPR in India.

CAA determines the rules of citizenship in India. NRC is the list of Indian citizens. NPR is the list of people residing in India.

India intends to create a through NPR in the near future. In this exercise, a government official will ask you

• Name
• Gender
• Date of birth
• Place of birth
• Parent citizenship
• PAN number
• Aadhar number
• Mobile number
• Place of stay
• etc.

NPR will track the population of India. The government can decide whether the person is a citizen of India, based on the rules in CAA. Thus NPR will lead to NRC.

This exercise has some benefits. Many nations keep track of its citizens e.g. the USA, Canada, etc. So India keeping track of its citizens is nothing new. Government benefits are normally only for citizens. Also, people from nearby countries should not be able to just enter India. Many governments try to restrict illegal immigration.

So then why are people opposed to this exercise?
People opposed to CAA say that it is not secular. That is correct. Hindu immigrants from Muslim countries will get citizenship in India more easily than a Muslim immigrant from a Muslim country. But, in my opinion, this is not a major problem. Muslim countries give preference to Muslims. So a Hindu majority country can give preference to Hindus.

The actual problems with this exercise are:

• Showing your documents to a government official is problematic in India. Most Indian bureaucrats demand a bribe to do their work. So genuine citizens, who have all documents, will face harassment.
• People who have lost their documents will have to stand in lines, bribe officials, etc to first get their documents in order. Only then can they become citizens of India. These people will face additional harassment.
• Lakhs of people in India are illiterate. They have minimal or no documents. Do they even have the capability to get the documents and show them to a government official?

NPR (which will lead to NRC based on CAA) will cause problems for everyone in the country. The middle-class and rich will face little harassment because they will arrange documents and pay bribes. The suffering of poor will increase in NPR. So, we have many people, across religions, opposing NPR. Opposition political parties are fanning this unrest to gain votes.

In this environment, the Indian government needs to make the registration process bribe-free and hassle-free e.g.

• The government can ask the people of India to register electronically. If there is no human interaction, then bribes are minimized.
• Instead of asking multiple documents, the government should only ask for one document e.g. PAN card or Aadhar card or birth certificate or school/college leaving certificate or employment certificate or bank account passbook or any document that shows that you are residing in India for many years. Fewer the documents, lesser the hassle.

Then, more people will likely comply with NPR.