What after identification?

Endgame in Assam's citizen-identification exercise unclear

Earlier this week, the Assam government released its first draft of the National Register of Citizens, or NRC. The NRC is, as the name implies, meant to permanently solve the fraught question of who is a “foreigner” — a migrant from Bangladesh with no citizenship rights — and who is not. There are 19 million names on the NRC at the moment; the scale of those excluded can be gauged from the fact that Assam’s population is around 33 million. As the large number of exclusions show, the requirements for being entered into the NRC are strict. An individual has