Ration card monster

Even while the SAARC leadership met on Bentota´s sunny beaches, India´s prime minister was being embarrassed by his insistent ally, Bombay´s don, Bal Thackeray. As part of his cleansing drive, the Maharashtra government of the bjp and Shiv Sena was forcibly removing "illegal immigrants/infiltrators" from the slums of Bombay.It was no coincidence that most of those removed were Bengali Muslims, who as Thackeray claimed, "would have decided our fate by voting [against him]". His argument was that they were not Indian citizens, and that they were stealing jobs. The issue made headlines when the West Bengal government strongly objected to the move. In the melee that ensued (Maharashtra vs West Bengal), the poor immigrant was left stateless..The Bangladesh government, as always, got into the farcical act of denying that any of its citizens had crossed the porous border into India to earn a living. The beleaguered Indian Central government wobbled along ambiguously..Thackeray´s move was flawed on two very important counts: he blatantly abused, for sectarian reasons, the loopholes in India´s weak system of guaranteeing procedural rights to immigrants (assuming all those he got deported were indeed immigrants), and he attacked, on purely economic grounds, the keystone of Bombay´s prosperity – migration..India´s Foreigners Registration Act gives a foreigner certain procedural rights, such as a chance to argue his case in court, and to prove his citizenship through any of the following: ration card, birth certificate, voter ID, or domicile card. However, the law in India, unlike most other democracies, overwhelmingly favours the authority, where the victim is guilty till he proves his innocence. Proving innocence is easy when you have the means, not when you are barely cobbling together a square meal..Now add to that the wishes of a very powerful and belligerent man who is convinced that all Muslims in his country are "infiltrators", and all Hindus who cross borders "refugees" . You can end up with a situation where carrying around proof of citizenship matters about as much as a tumour on your foot. On the day they were caught, probably no amount of proof could have saved the Bengali Muslims from deportation. The mala fide nature of Thackeray´s deportations was apparent when the Calcutta High Court decided that three of the first lot of deportees packed by train across India were in fact Indian citizens..Over time, India has come to an uneasy peace with the Bangladeshi immigrant. Nearly every year since 1971, India has been (to use the term in vogue) "pushing back" a few hundred immigrants – a fraction of those who cross over. Nevertheless, the number has been increasing every year, from less than 300 annually in the 1980s to a high of 750 in 1997. By July this year, 582 had already been deported, and another 122 were in remand. This increased push back reflects the escalating pressure of the ultra-conservative lobby which seeks to create a Hindu Rashtra..The fact is that Bangla-speaking immigrants have been an important source of cheap labour in the cities of India, and particularly in Bombay where they have contributed to the competitiveness of the gold, diamond and zari industries. Bombay is facing hard times; the recession is threatening all jobs, big and small. It is then no surprise that Thackeray managed to read the city´s pulse, concocted a cause for the job scare, and targeted the silent and scared immigrant. At least in this respect, Thackeray is not alone. Malaysia and Indonesia, when up against a recession, are also busy shipping out Bangladeshi (and other) migrant labour..To pass, a recession requires downward adjustment of wages and asset prices. Fluidity of labour is critical to the survival of domestic industry. Capital and productivity, not deportation, are solutions to a recession. The best policy is to let wages and asset prices adjust in a free market, and hope that improved productivity will improve the capital output ratio. Circling your wagons to cure a recession is possibly the worst remedy..Because of the apathetic attitudes of both the New Delhi and Dhaka governments, the upper courts seem to be the only recourse left for migrants. But this is hardly a viable solution; the judges are not there to deal with such issues on a case-by-case basis. The Central government in New Delhi must intervene, and interpret the problem with the understanding that the question is no longer about citizenship; it is about the violation of basic rights to push forward a sectarian agenda. To refer this issue to the courts or to committees will be unfair to all immigrants (national or international) in any part of any country..For years, Bangladesh and India have been ignoring the porosity of their borders. Now they must admit the fact and allow those who did migrate to stay on and work, for the logical end to the retributive justice that the Shiv Sena has in mind is far too ugly to imagine. A cleansing has no logical limits of purity. And retribution, specially when couched in terms of job snatching/undercutting, could lead to ´cleansing´ drives in other cities as well. The facade of moral probity and liberal attitudes towards neighbours, that India once maintained, is fast vanishing and the country is lapsing into a redneck mentality that does not go with its size..Countries create borders hoping that the people inside them would reinforce their sanctity, and that by not crossing these borders, citizens would somehow forget the other side. Unfortunately (for these countries and their creators), shared dreams are not so easily jettisoned, nor are common destinies. If a Bangladeshi ´infiltrates´ India, he does not do so to defile its purity. He does so because economic circumstances compel him to look towards those who, until the last redrawing of that map, were part of his shared dream.