The false propaganda unleashed by some political parties against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act has now been extended to the mandated programme to prepare the National Population Register (NPR) and the conduct of the decennial Census, which are scheduled for 2020 and 2021. Several opponents of the current establishment in New Delhi have been spreading disinformation about the NPR and the Census, both tools critical for governance.
The purpose of the CAA is to provide citizenship to persecuted religious minorities in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan who crossed the borders and came into India before 31 December 2014. This has nothing to do with any Indian citizen whatever be their religion. Nor does it open the floodgates for migrants due to the deadline fixed in the Act. The NPR and the Census are meant to get demographic information and also inputs on the social and economic status of the population in different regions of the country. These exercises are not aimed at disenfranchising anybody.
The NPR exercise was formulated and then introduced by the Congress-led UPA in 2010 to collect demographic information about individuals. Here, enumerators go door-to-door and gather particulars about “usual residents”—individuals residing at a given place for the preceding six months. So it is strange to find the Congress, the initiator of this idea, now oppose it and oppose it with such vehemence that it all looks like a theatrical act.
The Census in India is primarily a head count. It is the largest administrative and statistical exercise in the world. Three million individuals will be deployed to collect the data and for the first time, enumerators will be using a mobile app and other modern instruments to collate information from the field. It is being conducted in India since 1881 without a break and is a very important exercise from a national point of view as it tells us about the demographic changes that have taken place at the national and local levels in the preceding 10 years. Both surveys provide policymakers critical data to enable them to formulate national programmes, especially in regard to providing basic amenities to the less-advantaged sections of society.
The Census provides micro-level data on various parameters such as housing, education, economic activity, literacy, migration, fertility, language, religion, and number of people belonging to Scheduled Castes and Tribes and other information.
Data from these exercises form the basis for policymaking not just at the federal level, but at the state, district and taluk levels as well. So it is shocking to see someone like Arundhati Roy exhort citizens to provide fake names and addresses to the enumerators, so as to render the entire NPR exercise infructuous. Media reports indicate she has even suggested that the people provide ‘7, Race Course Road’—the PM’s address at one time—as their residential address. Even more preposterous is her suggestion that the Modi government, which got a massive mandate from the people in May 2019 to govern till 2024, should not be allowed to continue in office. Her attempt to paralyse the working of the Centre in regard to collection of data and to curtail the tenure of a duly elected government constitute subversion of the Constitution. Tolerance of such subversive activities is inimical to national unity and integrity. We should not allow a small minority of dissenters to disrupt governance and democratic traditions in this manner.
Further, the propaganda that the enumeration undertaken for the NPR must be resisted because it is against the Muslim minority in India is totally baseless. It appears as if some are afraid of the truth. Data is critical for a number of reasons. For example, the Centre and many state governments have formulated policies and welfare schemes specially to ameliorate the conditions of the religious and linguistic minorities. These schemes relate to education, employment, skilling and financial assistance for self-employment.
The pseudo-secularists seem to believe that Muslims are the only minority in India. Nothing can be farther from the truth. Population-wise, the Hindus are a minority in six of the 28 states in the country and in a few Union Territories, as are Christians (except in some states in the Northeast), the Sikhs (except in Punjab), Buddhists, Jains and Parsis. The Muslim population in India has risen from 35 million at the time of Independence to around 175 million at this point in time.
Further, we have the linguistic minorities who are at par with religious minorities as per our Constitution. A reading of Articles 29 and 30 in the Constitution will make it clear that the intention of the founding fathers was to accord the same kind of protection to both religious and linguistic minorities, and the state would be the unit to determine who is a minority. A Kannadiga in Hindi-majority Haryana (as this writer is) gets as much protection as say, a Muslim in Hindu-majority Haryana as per these constitutional provisions. So if pseudo-secularists oppose population data collection and Census, a legitimate government activity in all nations across the world, the presumption will be that they are afraid of the numbers that will crop up.
The steep rise in the Muslim population in India over the decades and the huge difference between the decadal growth rates of Muslims vis-a-vis the Hindus, Christians, Buddhists, Jains and Parsis, will nail the lie that Muslims are persecuted in India.
Indian citizens who are adherents of Islam must therefore guard against the false narrative of this miniscule minority of pseudo-secularists and should not allow themselves to be persuaded to oppose the NPR or the Census. India will become ungovernable if such tendencies emerge.
A SURYA PRAKASH
Chairman, Prasar Bharati
Email: suryamedia@gmail.com