Podcast: Niha Masih on history and political implications of the Assam NRC

Nearly 33 million residents of Assam applied to have their names included on the register, which was intended to distinguish between who was a legitimate resident of the state of the Assam and who was an illegal migrant.

In this week’s podcast, Milan Vaishnav (Director of the South Asia programme at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace) sits down with Niha Masih of the Washington Post about the ongoing political drama surrounding the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam.

Nearly 33 million residents of Assam applied to have their names included on the register, which was intended to distinguish between who was a legitimate resident of the state of the Assam and who was an illegal migrant.

When the list finally came out in late August, nearly 2 million people discovered that their names were not the list putting their citizenship status into question.

Niha Masih recently spent time on the ground in Assam. In this podcast, she and Milan discuss the history of the NRC process, its contested implementation, and the political colour that the exercise has taken on in recent years.

The duo also debate the political implications of the NRC exercise for the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the fate of the millions whose names did not appear on the revised list.