No Land’s People – Abhishek Saha

Description

The preparation of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam was an unprecedented exercise that sought to establish Indian citizenship of the state’s 33 million residents. The process intersected with the already existing parallel mechanisms of citizenship determination in the state. The final list, published on 31 August 2019, left out around 1.9 million applicants who risk being rendered stateless after their appeals are heard by the state’s Foreigners’ Tribunals.

The NRC’s narrative is expansive and complex – a blend of history, politics, law, human rights, and administrative red tape. No Land’s People documents the unfolding humanitarian crisis in Assam’s citizenship tangle, juxtaposes it with the complications of the NRC process while exploring technical, social and legal aspects of the exercise.

About the Author

Abhishek Saha is a journalist covering Northeast India for the Indian Express. He is based in Guwahati, Assam. During 2015-2018, he was the Kashmir correspondent for the Hindustan Times. He won the Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Award for his coverage of Kashmir’s summer unrest of 2016.