Implementation of NRC and CAA: Why a bureaucratic nightmare may be at hand

If the govt goes ahead with the Citizenship Amendment Act and National Register of Citizens, the process for the entire population may span 60-70 years - a test for India's under-staffed bureaucracy

Ganesh Devy, an activist for tribal rights and a well-known writer, is the most mild-mannered, level-headed of academics. Yet to listen to him on the challenges ahead for India as the Modi government seeks to cobble together a National Register of Citizens is guaranteed to give most people an anxiety attack. When we spoke yesterday morning, Devy took the narrative back almost 150 years to British colonial administrators designating large numbers of nomadic tribals in the course of drafting the Criminal Tribes Act of 1871. Among those regarded as a threat to the government were tribes such as the Meenas