 For more videos on people's struggles, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. India's National Register of Citizens or the NRC, a document meant to legally validate the citizenship status of Indians living in the state of Assam, has claimed one more life. 60-year-old Saira Begum, who belonged to Sonitpur in northern Assam, committed suicide by jumping into a well on August 31. According to reports, at least six people have committed suicide in the month of July, as India is organizing this mammoth and controversial citizenship verification drive. When the final list was published on August 31, 1.9 million people were excluded from the NRC list. In this video, we take a look into what is NRC and what does it mean for the lives of ordinary people in the northeastern state of Assam in India. What exactly is NRC? The National Register of Citizens is supposed to be a list of Indian citizens living in Assam. Migration has been a prolonged issue of discussion in the state. Migrants are often called outsiders. While the partition of India and the creation of Bangladesh in 1971 are generally considered as responsible for the influx of migrants into the state, their origin may be traced back to the mid-19th century when the British were following a policy of settling population from outside. The first National Register of Citizens in Assam was compiled after the completion of the first census of 1951 in the same year. Following the Bangladesh war of 1971, many refugees entered India. Assamese ethnic nationalists have been claiming that illegal immigrants entered the electoral roles and were taking away the rights of communities defined as indigenous to determine their political future. Consequently, the All Assam Students Union led an anti-pordinates agitation from 1971 to 1985 demanding the identification of illegal migrants in Assam. The Melli massacre and Khwira Berry massacre was some cases of extreme violence during this period in which more than 3000 Bengali Muslims were killed. The agitation led to the signing of the Assam Accord in 1985 between the leaders of the movement and the Indian government. Identification, detention and deportation of such immigrants was a major demand of this agitation. Under this Accord, those who entered the state between 1966 and 1971 would be deleted from the electoral roles and lose their voting rights for 10 years after which their names would be restored to the roles. Those who entered on or after March 25, 1971, the eve of the Bangladesh independence would be declared foreigners and deported. Anyone who cannot prove that they or their ancestors entered the country before the midnight of March 24, 1971 would be declared a foreigner and face deportation. NRC thus draws its definition of illegal immigrants from the Assam Accord. Why is the NRC in the news again? In 2015, the state of Assam began the process of updating the 1951 register. The main objective of this exercise is to compile a list of genuine Indians and exclude the immigrants who migrated to Assam at the end of the Bangladesh War of 1971. In May 2005, the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh cheered a tripartite meeting between the central government, the Assam government and the all Assam students union when an understanding was reached that steps must be taken towards updating the NRC to fulfill the promises made in the Assam Accord. The modalities for this were approved by the center in consultation with the Assam government. An NGO called Assam Public Works in the meanwhile approached the Supreme Court, pleading that the names of those migrants who have not been documented should be removed from the voters list. This is the first instance how the NRC matter reached the Supreme Court. In 2013, the Supreme Court asked the center to finalize the modalities to update the news and national register of citizens. The project was launched in 2015, monitored directly by the Supreme Court. The first draft was published on December 31, 2017. The second draft, which was published on July 30, 2018, excluded over 4 million people. Of the 32.9 million people who applied, only 28.9 million were declared genuine citizens. On August 31, 2019, the final list was out in which 1.9 million people were excluded. What is the real motive behind the current NRC process? Even in the final list of 1.9 million people, there are a lot of anomalies. A large number of women have been left out despite the fact that the Supreme Court declared the panchayat certificate as a valid document. The panchayat is a local self-governing body which works at the village level. Many others complained of being left out due to improper field verification. In some cases, ration cards which fall under the public distribution system as a support document have been reportedly rejected. Strangely, in a single family, some members are included while others have been excluded. The far-right Bharatiya Janta Party government at the centre has used NRC as a tool to religiously polarise the state by targeting the Muslim population. Amit Shah, senior BJP leader and present Home Minister had called immigrants as termites during the election campaign in early April. At the same time, the BJP has been assuring that Hindu migrants from Bangladesh would be given citizenship by amending the Citizenship Act. The Home Minister, Amit Shah, went further and stated in the Rajasabhaon July 1 that the government would bring a bill to provide citizenship to Hindu refugees left out of the NRC. Construction work has already started on the state's first detention centre for those who do not qualify as Indian citizens. Currently, the state has six detention centres that are run out of district jails. As per a submission made before the Assam Assembly on March 26, 2018, over 900 people are detained at these detention camps and close to 30,000 people have been deported since 1985. These detention camps have been criticised by progressive sections because of the inhumane living conditions and gross human rights violations. Those excluded from the final NRC list can appeal against it at the foreigners' tribunal with the status of citizenship will be finalised. The NRC process, which was designed to enrol all Indian citizens, excluding foreigners, is now in danger of being hijacked for the communal and sectarian purpose of the BJP. There are a number of issues thrown up by the NRC process in Assam, which need to be solved. There has to be a speedy legal process to render justice to those unjustly or wrongly excluded, either due to bureaucratic lapses or because of communal bias. What is going to happen to the millions who have been excluded from the Citizens' Register? As non-citizens, what will be their status and rights? Since it is already clear that those declared foreigners by the foreigners' tribunal cannot be deported to Bangladesh, which refuses to accept them, will they languish in detention centres indefinitely? The left and progressive sections have criticised the far-right BJP government for using NRC as a tool to divide the country on communal grounds. They demanded an end to the inhuman process around NRC and have called for creating a roadmap for the ones excluded from the list so that they don't end up becoming stateless. They also demanded closures of existing detention camps and to stop the construction of new ones.