Bangladeshis in India
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YEAR-WISE DEVELOPMENTS
1991-2011
NEERAJ KAUSHAL, January 30, 2020: The Times of India
Why Bangladesh looks more of a magnet for workers than India
The official count based on Indian census data tells the opposite story. Far from rising, the number of Bangladeshis living in India has been steadily declining since 1991. Bangladeshis are the largest group of foreign-born living in India, but they account for a tiny 0.2% of the nation’s population. In 1991, 4.04 million people born in Bangladesh lived in India. The number has fallen steadily to 3.7 million in 2001 and to 2.7 million in 2011. A decline of one-third in two decades!
These data imply not a net inflow but a net outflow of Bangladeshis from India since 1991. If the trend continues, the number of Bangladeshis in India would be down to 1.7 million in the next census count, which will be held in 2021, and further to less than a million in another decade. If indeed there is a problem, it is solving itself without the need for any fresh government intervention.
The lesson for a fiscally constrained federal government is: Do not waste funds to conduct a nationwide National Register of Citizens to identify illegal Bangladeshis. Their number will have likely declined to under one million, maybe just half a million by the time the proposed NRC is concluded. Note that in Assam NRC took 10 years and cost Rs 1,200 crore. Since India’s population is almost 40 times higher than Assam’s, an all-India NRC could cost almost Rs 50,000 crore. Can this be a priority?
Sceptics dismiss census data on Bangladeshis as gross underestimates. A web search yields a wide range of estimates from 1.5 million to 15 million. But these are guesstimates and do not specify whether they are based on surveys or projections, or how reliable the methodologies are.
Sceptics argue that every census undercounts the illegals since Bangladeshis, fearful of detention or deportation, lie about their birthplace. Yes, many Bangladeshis would of course lie about their birthplace. Yet most of the reported decline in the 2011 census is in West Bengal (from 3.04 million in 2001 to 2.2 million in 2011), where fears of detention and deportation are lowest.
West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee is dead against NRC. Her government has passed a resolution to not implement the Citizenship (Amendment) Act. Misreporting by illegals will surely be the lowest in a state where not just TMC but Congress and CPM have long wooed Muslim voters, including those from Bangladesh. It might go up in today’s new climate, but the climate was quite placid in 2011. Even if the absolute number of illegals is questionable, the downward trend is not.
What about Bangladeshi emigration post-2011? Demographic and economic trends in the two neighbouring countries suggest that India’s economic attraction for Bangladeshi migrants has diminished, especially in Assam which is among the poorest and least economically dynamic of Indian states.
India’s per capita GDP is higher than Bangladesh’s. Being the largest economy in the subcontinent, India would arguably attract workers from neighbouring countries with lagging economies. In the decade 2001-2011, India’s annual GDP growth rate was 8%, much higher than Bangladesh’s 5.7%.
But after 2011 Bangladesh has more than caught up with India. During 2012-19 Bangladesh’s GDP growth was 7%, a wee bit higher than India’s 6.8%. Most dramatic of all, IMF estimates that Bangladesh’s GDP growth in the current year will be 8.1%, far above India’s 4.8%. Bangladesh suddenly looks more of a magnet for workers than India.
Demographic trends in the two countries also suggest that the push factors for Bangladeshis to emigrate to India are weak. Demographers have demonstrated that the emigrant flow is generally from high-fertility to low-fertility countries. In 1981, Bangladesh’s total fertility rate was 6.2 births per woman, way above India’s 4.8. But over the years Bangladesh’s fertility has fallen phenomenally. It may surprise many Indians that in 2017, the fertility rate in Bangladesh was down to 2.06, well below India’s 2.24.
On social indicators, Bangladesh has been outperforming India for decades. Bangladeshis enjoy a life expectancy of 72 years. Indians on average live four years less. Compared with India, Bangladesh has a lower infant, neonatal, and under-5 mortality rate, higher female literacy, and higher labour force participation of women. In 1971, Bangladesh was behind or at par with India on these indicators but has forged ahead in recent decades. Compared with Assam, Bangladesh’s performance is even better.
These economic and demographic trends make nonsense of the rhetoric of BJP on Bangladeshi immigrants into India. Union home minister Amit Shah has called them “termites” and “ ghuspetiyas”, meaning intruders. BJP has enacted CAA and proposed a nationwide NRC. Hindutva believers passionately seek to catch and throw out a rising flood of illegals. But the census tells a very different picture of falling Bangladeshi numbers. We need to act on actual facts, not guesstimates and passionate rumours.
The writer is Professor of Social Policy at Columbia University
2014-19: 10k infiltrators held along border
10k infiltrators held along B’desh border since 2014: Govt, July 24, 2019: The Times of India
TIMES NEWS NETWORK
New Delhi:
As many as 10,746 infiltrators were apprehended along the India-Bangladesh border since 2014, the government informed Lok Sabha on Tuesday. Of these 9,702 were intercepted in the border regions of West Bengal alone.
Junior home minister Nityanand Rai, in his written reply to a question in LS, said border guarding forces had apprehended 369 infiltrators from the India-Bangladesh border in West Bengal till June 30 this year, against 900 in 2018; 992 in 2017; 1,875 in 2016; 3,296 in 2015 and 2,260 in 2014. In comparison, 65 infiltrators were caught along Assam’s border with Bangladesh between January 2014 and June 2019. This was less than the 677 infiltrators apprehended along the international border with Tripura and 281 on the Meghalaya border. Mizoram saw the least infiltrators (21) apprehended in the corresponding period.
Rai said even though border guarding forces conducted regular patrolling and undertook anti-tunnelling exercise to stop illegal infiltration from Bangladesh, some illegal migrants were able to enter surreptitiously, taking advantage of the difficult riverine terrain in parts of the international border that are not amenable to fencing.
2016: 2 crore illegal Bangladeshis in India
India has 2 cr illegal Bangladeshis: Govt, Nov 17 2016 : The Times of India
The government told Rajya Sabha on Wednesday that there were around 2 crore Bangladeshi immigrants staying illegally in India. Their population in India, now almost equal to the population of Australia (2.4 crore), shows a rise of around 67% over the 1.2 crore estimate given out by the UPA government in 2004 but withdrawn soon after.
“There are reports of Bangladeshi nationals having entered the country without valid travel documents. Since the entry of such Bangladeshi nationals is clandestine...it is not possible to have accurate data...As per available inputs, there are around 20 million illegal Bangladeshi migrants staying in India,“ Union MoS for home Kiren Rijiju said in a written reply to MP Jharna Das Baidya. The 20 million estimate far surpasses the figure of 12 million cited in the same House in 2004 by then minister of state for home Sriprakash Jaiswal.He had, in reply to a question dated July 15, 2004, said that 1,20,53,950 illegal Bangladeshi migrants were residing in 17 states and Union territories as on December 31, 2001.
He also said Assam alone accounted for 50 lakh Bangladeshi squatters, while their number was estimated to be the highest in West Bengal, at 57 lakh.
The BJP, which was then the main opposition party , demanded that the 12 lakh illegal Bangladeshi immigrants be identified and deported. As a political storm brewed in states like Assam, Jaiswal withdrew his reply, dismissing the 12-million figure as one based on “unreliable reports“ and “hearsay“.
However, a Union minister said on Tuesday that it was a conscious decision by the Modi government to highlight the 20-million estimate of illegal Bangladeshi migrants residing in India. “Unlike UPA, we won't be cowed down by pressure to deny the figure as `hearsay',“ said the minister.
Incidentally , Rijiju's reply does not dwell on a definite strategy of the government to identify and deport the 20 million illegal Bangladeshi migrants. “Deportation of illegally staying foreign nationals is continuous process. The powers of identification, detention and deportation of illegal foreign nationals including Bangladeshi nationals have been delegated to the state governments and Union territories under Section 3(2)(c) of the Foreigners Act, 1946,“ he stated.
BJP is in power in Assam, which with West Bengal shows the highest incidence of illegal immigration from Bangladesh. Chief minister Sarbananda Sonowal had, after coming to power in May 2016, declared his intent to update the national register of citizens (NRC) in Assam and seal the Indo-Bangladesh border in the state in two years.
West Bengal, however, may be at odds with the Centre's assessment of number of Bangladeshi immigrants staying illegally within its jurisdiction.
