Many left out for failing to give birth certificates

Poor rate of institutional delivery, particularly in remote areas of Assam, is one of the reasons behind non-inclusion of names of many genuine Indian citizens in the draft National Register of Citizens (NRC), which was published by the Assam Government on July 30.

Some of the young people in remote areas, particularly in Muslim-dominated Goroimari revenue circle in Assam’s Kamrup district, have failed to find their names in the NRC despite living in the villages for generations.

“Neither I nor three of my brothers and two sisters have birth certificates. My mother gave birth to me and my siblings at home and hence there is no document like birth certificate to prove our identity,” said Abdul Kasem (29) of Laruajan village under Goroimari revenue circle in Kamrup district of Assam, located only about 70 km from State’s Capital town Guwahati.

In the absence of birth certificate issued by the local hospitals many of the genuine Indian citizens living in these areas submitted self declaration and documents issued by the Gaon Burhas (village heads), which were, however, rejected by the NRC authorities.

It may be mentioned here that many of the interior areas in Assam particularly the char areas (riverine islands) has poor health care facilities and records low percentage of institutional delivery. Although the Assam Government under the National health Mission (NHM) has appointed Accredited Social and Health Activist (ASHA) workers to cover remote areas under basic health facilities, the conditions were pitiable in most of the areas till one and a half decade back.

“Now there are ASHA baideu (acronym for these community health workers), who go from house to house regularly to make people aware about the benefits of institutional delivery. The ASHA workers now also take lead in arranging birth certificates for the new born and their timely vaccination. However, in those days when we were born there were no facilities like that. Most of the children used to born at home and that was quite normal,” said Kasem. 

According to the National Family Health Survey of 2015-16, Assam is ranked at 20th position among the States and Union Territories in India as far as the institutional delivery is concerned with 70 percent. However, the institutional delivery in remote areas is low compared to urban areas.

Social activist and former president of Hatishola Bhalukabari Gram Panchayat, Akram Hussain said that lack of birth certificate forced many of these indigenous Muslims to submit either self declaration or a certificate from Gaon Burhas, which was rejected by the NRC authorities.

“Now we have a hospital at Gobardhana, which is only 20 kms from Laruajan. However, 20 years back there was no hospital nearby and there is nothing called institutional delivery. Babies were born at home and their survival depends on luck. Their births were not registered and hence majority of the people are without a birth certificates,” said Akram.

He said that while a total of 16,931 people applied under the Hatishola Bhalukabari Gram Panchayat for inclusion of their names in the NRC, 4,886 people failed to find their names in the NRC. Out of these people there are over 1,000 youths did not have birth certificates and were rejected.

The draft NRC included names of 2.89 crore people in the State, but it excluded names of 40,07,707 names for different 'discrepancies'.