Immigration is a natural phenomenon. People migrate from one place to another for various reason. But in Assam immigration has been causing very serious problem. Its impacts are wide spread in every field of life like social, political, economic etc. Immigration causes- population exploision, excess pressure on land, environmental degradation, worse effects on labor market, price rise, social problem etc.
Large scale illegal migration from East Pakistan or Bangladesh over several decades has been altering the demographic condition of the state. It poses a gravel threat both to the identity of the Assamese people and to national security. It reduce the Assamese people to a minority in their own state as happened in Tripura and Sikkim.
Immigration is a silent attack. Migration in Assam has its own history. The fact is that immigration begin much before partition. There must have been movement of people between the neighboring regions of Bengal and the Northeast for many centuries before the East India Company annexed the region through the Yandabu Treaty with the Burmese emperor, in February 1826, and other conquests are followed. Immigration in its modern form, however, began with British policy of 1891 to encourage peasants from East Bengal to cultivate ‘wastelands’in western Assam to grow more food and earn more land revenue for the state. The British developed the tea industry in Assam. They imported labor from Bihar and other provinces to work in the tea gardens. The Assamese people cultivating one crop per year, were not interested in working as labor in the tea gardens nor in increasing or expanding land cultivation to meet the additional requirement of food for the large labor population employed in the tea gardens. Therefore, the British government encouraged the Bengali Muslims peasents from Bangladesh to move into lower Assam for cultivating the ‘wastelands’. This is the onset of the illegal migration and this set into a motion, a movement pattern, which is still continuing till today. The Bengali Muslims were hard working peasants who occupied the vaccant wastelands and put that area under cultivation. They made a significant contribution to the agricultural economy of Assam.
Still immigration continues to be treated as political issue because of threat to people’s land and identity and political parties exploit it for their own objectives. The opposition rightly accuses the ruling party of using immigrants as vote bank. Neither government took any serious step against the immigration problem.
1. Population Exploision: Population increasing very rapidly as a result of immigration. States population now 3, 11, 69272 as per Census of India, 2011. There are 10.7 million Muslims in the Indian state of Assam, forming over 34% population of the state. The highest growth rate at the district level has beenrecorded by Dhubri (24.40%)which borders Bangladesh closely followed by Morigaon (23.39%) and Goalpara (22.74%). The lowest growth rates recorded in Kokrajhar. Of the 36 districts eight districts registered rise in decadal population growth rate. While the total population of Assam in 2001 was 2, 66, 55,528 but according to the latest report the total number of population at present is 3,11, 69272, which grows at a population by 45,13,744 persons. While the male population rose to 1,59,54,927 scoring a growth of 15.81%, the female population stood at 1,52,14,345 with a growth of 18.14%.
2. Pressure on land: The danger that the Muslim immigrant have posed is multidimensional. They came Assam as poor landless peasants. Most of them are still very poor and illiterate. But they userped lands, often under political patronage everywhere in Assam right from the fallow government lands to reserve forests to even agricultural land belonging to indigenous people in more remote areas. The traditional common property resources of the indigenous communities have been encroached in the process. This is one important source of tribal-immigrant conflicts in contemporary Assam. Besides, with their sheer demographic strength the Muslim immigrants today are in a position to dictate terms to entire political discourse of Assam.
3. Environmental degradation: Rise of population is one of the main cause of environmental degradation. Production of slam area in and around the city and Production of huge wastes has a large scale contribution in environmental degradation.
4. Effect on labor market: In Guwahati city of Assam, the labour market is almost completely captured by Muslim immigrant. The Muslim immigrant are provided service at low wages than the local labour thus the local poor labours are deprived from earning their livelihood from household work to agricultural field also. As a result, the existing or former home laborers have to leave their jobs or to work at lower wage rate.
5. Price rise: Due to illegal immigration the population increases rapidly but the agricultural products are not increasing at that ratio. As a result price of agricultural products and other commodities are increasing day by day in Assam.
6. Social problem: The immigrants have some particular religious and linguistic characteristics which differs from the indigenous social structure. Many poor immigrants are involved in unsocial and criminal activities due to struggle for their existence, which directly or indirectly affects society. The social fear is that the Assamese way of life will get subverted once the migrant dominate the state.A strong impact is also envisioned in the spheres of language and religion. Assam, being a Hindu majority state, fears that it will become Muslim-dominated due to influx of illegal migrants. This also become a tension between Assamese Muslims, who have made Assam their home for centuries. In tribal belt like Bodoland, severe problem occurred last year due to the illegal migration Muslim immigrants.
(The article is solely the opinion of the author. The views expressed here are solely personal and not in any way connected to any organisation or any political party ).