Assam - People
An effort by the state of Assam to tackle illegal immigration going back five decades identified 1.9 million people who are ineligible for Indian citizenship. There had been more than 40 cases of suicide due to concerns about loss of citizenship and detention. Critics say the list discriminates against Muslims. The National Register of Citizens was published on 31 August 2019, the result of what the government says was a yearslong effort to weed out illegal immigration in the remote southern Himalayan state. The final list included 31.1 million legal residents. Most of the 1.9 million deemed ineligible are expected to turn out to be Muslim.
Officials checked documents submitted by roughly 33 million people for a draft list released in 2018, which left out more than 4 million residents of the state, many of them Hindu. India's registrar general said 30 Jul 2018 that some 4 million people who failed to produce valid documents had been excluded from a draft list of citizens in the northeastern state of Assam. Residents were asked to prove that they or their families lived in the country before March 1971, when a wave of people fleeing conflict in neighboring Bangladesh settled in the border state.
Assam had long seen large influxes of migrants, including Muslims from Bangladesh, which saw millions flee to India during the country's 1971 war of independence. The flood of newcomers sparked decades of inter-religious and ethnic tensions that saw residents blame outsiders for stealing their jobs and land. The resentment prompted the state government to try to find a lasting solution.
Bordering six States and two countries, Assam accounts for about 2.4 percent of the country’s geographical area. Its 26.64 million people (2001 Census) are 2.59 percent of the country’s population, and its population density of 340 persons per square kilometer is marginally higher than the average density for the country (324 persons per square kilometer). According to Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), Assam had nearly 16.43 million wireless subscribers and 0.178 million wire-line subscribers, as of December 2014.
Most people (67.13 percent) profess the Hindu religion, while 28.43 percent are Muslims and 3.32 percent are Christians. There are also adherents of other religions – amongst them Buddhists (0.29 percent), Jains (0.09 percent) and Sikhs (0.07 percent).
About 4 million people in India’s northeastern Assam state fould themselves in legal limbo after their names were left off a controversial list of registered Indian citizens. Unless the residents in question can prove their citizenship status, they could face the prospect of statelessness or eventual deportation. The government on 30 July 2018 released the list, known as the National Register of Citizens, or NRC. The database includes the names of people who can prove they lived in Assam or came to the state before neighboring Bangladesh declared its independence in late March 1971.
At the time, mainly Muslim Bangladesh was known as East Pakistan. After Pakistan launched a military crackdown that year, hundreds of thousands of Hindus and Muslims crossed into Assam, seeking refuge. For more than a century, Hindus and Muslims have moved from what is now Bangladesh to Assam to earn their living; however, India regards any Bengali-speaking people who settled in Assam after March 1971 to be illegal immigrants.
India’s home minister, Rajnath Singh, said in parliament that no coercive action like deportation would be taken against anyone on the basis of the latest draft register. He also said people would have opportunities to get their names in the database, which majority-Hindu India says is designed to identify illegal Bangladeshi immigrants.
According to the 1991 Census, 12.82 percent of the population of Assam are classified as Scheduled Tribes and 7.40 percent as Scheduled Castes. Tribals are the dominant community in the two hill districts of Karbi Anglong and North Cachar Hills. In Kokrajhar and Dhemaji, they constitute over 41 percent of the total population. Other significant concentrations of Scheduled Tribes are in Lakhimpur, Goalpara, Bongaigaon, Nalbari and Darrang districts.
The State’s 23 districts vary considerably in size and population. The sprawling district of Karbi Anglong, almost 10,500 square kilometres in area, is nearly eight times as large as Hailakandi district. With respect to population densities the spread is even larger. The most densely populated district, Nagaon, has a population density almost sixteen times that of the least densely populated district. Most people in Assam, in fact seven of every eight people, (87.28 percent) live in rural areas.
Although the average population per district is 1.6 million, the range covers the 2.52 million population of Kamrup district, as well as the 186,000 persons residing in the North Cachar Hills. The spread of population densities is even larger. The most densely populated district, Nagaon (604 persons/ square kilometer) has a population density almost 16 times that of the least densely populated district, North Cachar Hills (38 persons/ square kilometer). Dhubri, Kamrup, Karimganj, Barpeta and Nalbari all have population densities in excess of 500 persons per square kilometer.
In the 20th century, between the years 1901 and 2001, the population of the State increased by a little over eight fold, clearly outpacing the average rate of growth of population in the rest of the country. The decadal variation in population in Assam has been very much larger than that in India as whole, especially in the first half of the century. It is only in the last decade that the decadal variation in Assam has declined to a rate less than that of India.
At the beginning of the 20th century the sex ratio in Assam was decidedly adverse. It has improved significantly in recent decades. There are now 932 women for every 1000 men in the State, compared to 933 per 1,000 for the country. Significantly, the improvement in Assam has come when the sex ratio for the country as whole has been declining. This is an extremely positive development.
The dearth of employment opportunities for educated people in the State is evidenced by the increasing number of people with high educational and professional qualifications on the Live Register. There is a significant differential between the unemployment rate for educated and uneducated persons. Unemployment rates for the educated in Assam are much higher in comparison to all India rates, both in rural and urban sectors, irrespective of sex. Unemployment rates for educated women are much higher than those for men, in both rural and urban areas.
It is likely that a number of children are employed in the informal and unorganised sectors, as domestic help, in tea stalls and motor garages. A high proportion of those over 60 years continue to participate in the work force. This proportion is extremely high for males - two out of three men over the age of 60 years, work. This reflects society’s inability to ‘allow’ people, especially the poor, to retire. Low incomes and no savings for many people means that they have to continue to work throughout their lives. Assam has an extremely high proportion of its population living in poverty. Despite a decline in the proportion, more than a third of its people are below the poverty line. The percentage of poor in Assam is the highest among the seven States of the North East.
There is a rural-urban divide; two out of five people in rural areas are likely to be under the poverty line, while in urban Assam, the incidence is less than one in ten. Rural poverty is much higher (40.04 percent of population in 1999-2000) than urban poverty (7.47 percent of persons), and the incidence of rural poverty is higher than the all India figure of 27.09 percent.
Although there has been an overall improvement in school infrastructure, there continue to be provisioning deficiencies, in particular for additional classrooms, drinking water and toilet facilities, at the primary and upper primary levels. Assam is now making a concerted effort to ensure enrolment and regular participation of all 6-14 year old children in school, and the completion of elementary education up to class VII/VIII, with acceptable learning levels.
People in the State now live longer than their parents did, and health profiles have improved. Yet, health indicators in Assam also reveal inequity – between districts, between income and other groupings. There is a rural – urban divide, and a gender gap reflected across almost all indicators. The Total Fertility Rate (TFR) was 3.3 children per woman in 1995-97, a substantial decline from 1980-81, when it was as high as 4.1 children. The TFR for all India was 3.4 in the 1995-97 period. There is a substantial rural-urban gap in fertility rates as well.
Diarrhoea is one of the most common causes of death among children in Assam. The incidence is high because of the poor quality of drinking water. In the case of infant mortality, it is estimated that close to a third of deaths occur due to diarrhoea. Hospital data shows about 20 percent of all under-5 deaths of children who have been admitted in the hospital is also due to diarrhoea.
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