And it goes on...
It's been quite some time since I've really gone to some unknown lane, shooting just everything I found on the street. I used to do this quite often. It was sometime in January in the year 2008. I was in Siliguri (West Bengal) railway station, on my way back home -- Asssam. Our train got delayed by four hours. I knew I had a lot of time to kill. Thankfully, I had a digi SLR, Nikon D60. It was a great Camera at that time considering I just upgraded to a digital SLR from a film. Took a lot of shots, but sharing only the portraits here.
They are refugees, mostly from Nepal and Bangladesh who had taken shelter in an open space near the railway station. After speaking to a couple of them I realized they had been living in the same place for the last 15 days. There were old, young, infants and young children.
Illegal migration from Assam has been taking place primarily for economic reasons. Bangladesh is the world's most densely populated country with a population density of 969 per square kilometre. The growth rate of population in that country is 2.2 per cent and its population is growing at the rate of 2.8 million per year. Each year nearly one third of Bangladesh gets inundated by floods, displacing 19 million people. 70 million people constituting 60 per cent of the population live below the poverty line. The per capita income in Bangladesh is 170 dollars per year, which is much lower than the per capita income in India. The border between India and Bangladesh is very porous.
In these circumstances, the continued large scale population movement from Bangladesh to India, is inevitable, unless effective measures are taken to counter it.
Besides the above considerations, there are other contributory factors facilitating infiltration from Bangladesh. Ethnic, linguistic and religious commonality between the illegal migrants and many people on our side of the border, enables them to find shelter. It makes their detection difficult. Some political parties have been encouraging and even helping illegal migration, with a view to building vote banks. These immigrants are hard-working and are prepared to work as cheap labour and domestic for lower remuneration, than the local people. This makes them acceptable. Moreover, with corruption being all pervasive, corrupt officials, are bribed to provide help. Recently, a racket has been busted in Lakhimpur. Four individuals were found to have been providing forged citizenship certificates and other documents to illegal migrants for the last 14 years.
Found this piece in the Report on Illegal Migration into Assam submitted to The President of India by The Governor of Assam 8 November, 1998.
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