“Home” a place that keeps you safe, secure and protects you to grow physically and mentally. It is a place where your family stay together, share together, cry together, eat together and laugh together. And we all know about a section of people who do not have a place to stay are called “HOMELESS”. In the era of development and race of high GDP growth, there are many people who do not have even basic amenities to survive, homeless are one such category. To understand their situation imagine you and your family eat on roads, take bath in open, children sleep under the flyover that too without eating all three meals in a day. The population who wakes up every day thinking to arrange their three meals for the day and in arranging the same next day goes to sleep. This population consist of several groups majorly nomadic, Dalits, tribal, transgender, other backward classes and then general.

India has one of the largest population of homeless in the world. According to census 2011, there are 1.7 million (17 lac) homeless population in the country. But several civil society organization have claimed that it is more than 10 lac just in the city like Mumbai, Bengaluru, Delhi and Chennai only. The population who is still struggling to survive every day, will be forced to first prove whether they belong to this country or not? The homeless who belongs to SC, ST, OBC and Minorities are pushed to margins of the society since thousands of years and now with the coming of the Act their issue of caste-based discrimination which was never a priority now it will be pushed to corners and first prove whether they are eligible to stay in the country or not?

The Citizen Amendment Act (CAA) seeks to make illegal migrants who are Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan, eligible for citizenship, who arrived in India on or before December 31, 2014. The CAA will not be applicable who lives in sixth schedule areas of Assam, Meghalaya, Mizoram, or Tripura.

The National Population Register (NPR) is the list of “usual residents” of the country. A “usual resident” is the person who has resided in a local area for the past six months or more or intends to reside in the area for the next six month or more. It is being prepared under provisions of the Citizenship Act, 1955 and the Citizenship (Registration of Citizens and Issue of National Identity Cards) Rules, 2003. But the NPR 2019 has 21 points as compared to 15 points in 2010. The additional 6 points ask about the last place of residence, passport number, Aadhaar ID, Voter ID card number, drivers’ license number and mobile phone number, which were not asked before.

The National Register of Citizen (NRC) is a record of those who are a legal citizen of India. NRC includes the demographic information of all those individuals who qualify as an Indian citizen as per the citizenship Act 1955. The NRC was first prepared after the 1951 census of India and since then it has not been updated except Assam.

The burning discussion around relation (though denied by Home Ministry) between National Registrar of Citizen’s (NRC) and National Population Register (NPR) is that NPR is the first step towards NRC. NPR is already scheduled to begin from April 2020 and the process to be finished

by September 2020, is going to hit the homeless all over the country. Study conducted by Indo Global Social Service Society, in 15 cities of 5 states (Bihar, Maharashtra, Jharkhand, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh), revealed that 30 per cent of the homeless do not have any legal identity proofs, it means during the NPR process when enumerator will visit the homeless on the street (if they visit then) and ask (not mandatory as per NPR manual, but just to ensure the accuracy) for the document, 30 per cent homeless will fail to produce the relevant document and information will be filled in verbally by the enumerator. This will definitely lead to a discrepancy in the information. Study says that 53 per cent homeless are illiterate it means homeless will be able to spell their name neither in their native language nor in English. For example, if a person’s name is Zainab, but due to poor linguistic understanding can write as Jainab. If a person who is not literate and also not having any legal document cannot differentiate between “Z” and “J”. As a consequence the person will be excluded from the NRC.

Further, the information filled in NPR will be verified during the NRC process, and homeless will be asked to produce the documents for physical verification. The problem that is going to hit homeless is that this is the floating population. They move around the city, state and the country for various reasons. It means that during the process when enumerator will visit them there is a high possibility that they won’t be available and will not be included in the NPR. If they are not included in the NPR then verification cannot be done under NRC process and will be excluded from the NRC list. Does It mean they will be declared as foreigners?  Moving further the recent NRC exercise in the Assam presented the horrific picture of the process which led to death, selling of property to get citizenship and others. In many cases, people received notice to appear in a couple of days which requires huge money to travel in such short notice. Also, how homeless will be informed when they keep floating around, and most of them neither have access to the mobile phone, internet nor neighbour. A post shared on Facebook by one of the victims from Assam says that they received a call on 6th June 2019 from their mother to appear in a week. They booked last minute tickets worth 42000 for 11th June for the three people from Delhi to Guwahati to go and show documents so that their lineage can be traced within India after the time period of 1971.

Also, if the homeless do not have the address then under which purview of NRC Seva Kendra will they be called for the verification? At this conjecture, Government is strongly intending to implement NPR, NRC & CAA which may push homeless people to statelessness. This is a huge question to be questioned.

This biased approach of the state towards the homeless is also because of the inherent casteist attitude of the state as a majority of the population belong to the marginalized section. Where prioritization of the homeless issues is far-reaching objective and we do not find this in any development agenda of the state, in turn, the same population who have never had access to a dignified life of a citizen are forced to now prove their citizenship. Such contradictions are not just against the fundamental rights of the citizens but also the blatant denial of social justice at the hands of authoritarian government. All these questions are unanswered by the government which is going to hit the homeless very hard.

Author – Sonu P Yadav, is an Independent writer and can be reached at sonuhari.yadav@gmail.com

Further references –

PRS Legislative Research, Home Affairs. (n.d). The Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2019. Retrieved from http://prsindia.org/billtrack/citizenship-amendment-bill-2019, accessed on 19 January 2020.

Sharma, A. (2019, September 14). 86% Hindus, 66% With Aadhaar, Over 50% Work Daily: Survey Busts Myths about India’s Homeless. NEWS 18. Retrieved from https://www.news18.com/news/india/86-hindus-66-with-aadhaar-over-50-work-daily-survey-busts-myths-on-indias-homeless-2308571.html, accessed on 19 January 2020

IGSSS & OFFER (2019). Enabling Inclusive City for the Homeless. Retrieved from https://igsss.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Baseline-Study-Enabling-Inclusive-Cities-for-Homeless.pdf accessed on 02 January 2020