In what can only complicate matters in Assam if it comes to pass, a home ministry appointed committee – set up to suggest ways to implement Clause 6 of the Assam Accord – is learnt to have recommended the introduction of Inner Line Permit (ILP) for the state to control the influx of outsiders. ILP for Assam would mean even Indians from other states would need a permit to visit there. This would be extremely detrimental for investment and business in Assam. It could also put paid to hopes of actualising India’s Act East policy. After all, Assam and other Northeast states were supposed to serve as a land bridge between India and Southeast Asia. But identity politics is severely undermining those goals.
If one wonders what led the home ministry committee to propose a self-goal such as this one, it arises out of the need to assuage Assamese opinion after the disquiet stemming from the Citizenship (Amendment) Act. The latter is seen by Assamese – particularly those in the Brahmaputra Valley – as violative of the 1985 Assam Accord as it seeks to grant citizenship to non-Muslim minorities from Bangladesh entering uptil December 31, 2014. The intensity of anti-CAA protests in Assam appears to have caught the Centre unawares – leading it to propose the ILP. Never mind that it opens up another, perhaps bigger can of worms.
The NDA government nullified Article 370 of the Constitution to fully integrate Jammu & Kashmir with the rest of India. Curiously, it is following the opposite track in Assam and the Northeast, where more ILP zones will end up ghettoising the region. The Northeast cannot develop this way. Moreover ILP in Assam will likely see similar parochial demands across the country. This is a slippery slope we must avoid at all costs. Whatever happened to the ‘one nation’ logic that NDA was supposed to champion?
