CAA's Negative Impact on Economic Citizenship

Citizenship has a noticeably clear economic perspective. People migrate to countries that have economic opportunities. These immigrants bring to their adopted new countries new skills, passion and expertise. Of the three factors of production, land is immobile, bit labour and capital can move and the faster they move the more agile is the economy. Any attempt at curbing the movement of either of these two factors of production makes the economy sluggish. The ongoing debate on citizenship laws needs to also focus on the economic aspect of this important issue 

Prof Jeemol Unni and Abhishek Preetham in their latest paper follow the trajectory of the concept of citizenship in India from its initial discussion in the constitution through the various amendments to the Citizenship Act. They go beyond traditional citizenship to consider the concept of ‘economic citizenship’ in academic theory as well as in the Indian context. Their paper also attempts to put a rupee figure on the economic loss due to social unrest, such as riots and public disturbance.

Starting with the significance of the ‘state’ as the most important, powerful, and sovereign institution, the authors identify citizens as one of the crucial pillars of the state (along with territory, government, and sovereignty), and go on to discuss citizenship in detail. Citizenship has evolved from the exclusionary idea of free males who had the right to participate in public affairs to the modern ideal of inclusive and equal citizenship for all with its attendant rights and responsibilities. In India, citizenship was formally introduced only during the British colonial rule. The voluminous, comprehensive Indian constitution, despite being written over almost 3 years, found citizenship to be one of the most challenging concepts, and Dr Ambedkar publicly admitted that it was impossible to anticipate all future contexts of citizenship to address them.

Independent India enacted the Citizenship Act of 1955 after a lot of discussion and debate, and has had to amend it six times since. Though the earlier amendments were done for a specific requirement, the 2016 and 2019 amendments have been arbitrary and politically motivated, and circumvent various constitutional articles protecting religious rights, by invoking Article 11 which enables Parliament to regulate the right of citizenship by law. These have led to sharp increases in religious violence and religious restrictions, as seen in the spurt in the Social Hostility Index and Government Restrictive Index. Though it seeks to make a populist, political statement, the CAA-2019 is not in itself is not dangerous. It is only in conjunction with a biased implementation of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) that it can wreak havoc by discriminating against certain Indian citizens. Much like Mr Jack Sprat in the nursery rhyme who did not eat fat but licked the platter clean along with his wife who did not eat lean.

Read more at: https://www.siasat.com/caa-2019-will-have-negative-impact-on-the-idea-of-economic-citizenship-2040330/