Beyond labels: Char survey should uplift, not alienate communities
The survey of char areas in Assam is a long-overdue step to address marginalisation, and detect illegal migration. But without genuine intent, it risks becoming another tool for divisive politics;

The State government’s move to conduct a survey of the char (mostly temporary sandbars amid rivers) areas is welcome. Over the years, the people living in the char areas in western Assam have been a marginalised lot, with successive governments ignoring the plight of these inhabitants living in harsh conditions without many of the amenities that people in other areas get to enjoy.
As the origin of most of these people is rooted in migration from Bangladesh (dating back to India’s pre-Independence days and continuing in the subsequent decades, too) – and with cross-border migration causing a demographic imbalance in the State – it has become a convenient weapon for mainstream political parties and organisations to brand them as illegal Bangladeshis.
While there are bound to be illegal migrants among this segment of the population, successive governments did little to detect and deport those through a legal process; rather choosing to keep the issue burning for narrow electoral dividends. At the same time, a majority of these inhabitants are more likely to be legitimate Indian citizens than illegal Bangladeshi settlers, based on the Assam Accord-mandated cut-off date of March 25, 1971.
A natural corollary of the char inhabitants living in sub-human conditions with little access to education and healthcare has been their high fertility rate (although it is reportedly declining of late). It is also a fact that the difficult terrain coupled with the limited presence of the State’s law and order machinery in these areas has had a negative impact on law and order, with crimes tending to be on the higher side at some of these places.
With successive governments little inclined towards ameliorating their lot, the unwarranted conditions continue to prevail in the chars, widening a divide between them and other communities. The task at hand for the government is clear – more so because the BJP government itself has been branding the char areas as dens of Bangladeshis and criminal elements.
Every right-thinking citizen will take the government’s assertion with a pinch of salt though. The authorities, as has been envisaged under the ongoing survey, need to do a socio-economic profiling of the people and detect if there are illegal Bangladeshi settlers in the chars. This should not be a Herculean task, given the powerful State machinery and resources at its disposal.
None would object to such an exercise but perpetuating the unresolved situation to further the government’s divisive political agenda cannot be acceptable. Another imperative is to facilitate a system for granting land ownership to legitimate citizens, as the temporary nature of many of the chars invariably compels the inhabitants to keep shifting from one place to another, earning disrepute for them as encroachers.