Illegal Migration

While India is not immediately affected by the Rohingya refugee migration from Myanmar, it cannot be oblivious to the regional dimensions of such human migrations based on ethnic discontent.

• Gautam Sen
• August 13, 2012
• IDSA Comments

Migration, a worldwide phenomenon, has often been seen as beneficial for both the sending and receiving countries. However, post-9/11, the phenomenon is seen as a mixed blessing. It is also being realised that it is impossible to check illegal migration unless the sending country cooperates. In South Asia, India has been at the receiving end of the problem of illegal immigration from Bangladesh. This paper argues that such illegal migration is posing a threat to internal security because the issue has not been properly securitised.

• Anand Kumar
• January 2011
• Strategic Analysis

The issue of Bangladeshi illegal migration has troubled the state of Assam for decades now. Assamese political and social discourses fear that this unchecked migration from across the border will subvert their way of life and change the demographic profile of the state in the near future.

• Namrata Goswami
• January 14, 2010
• Issue Brief

India faces risks at its borders even more severe than those faced by the United States. Indian authorities would benefit by studying the US methodologies and experience and drawing appropriate lessons.

• Arvind Gupta
• December 14, 2009
• IDSA Comments

In a conference on socio-economic development in Kamchatka Kray in 2008, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said that if Russia does not step up the level of activity of its work in the Russian Far East (RFE), it may risk losing territory. The tone of his remarks was ‘unprecedented’ and reminiscent of former President Vladimir Putin’s even more direct and straightforward warning, who observed in 2000 that “if the authorities failed to develop the region, even the indigenous Russian population will mainly be speaking Japanese, Korean and Chinese in a few decades.”

• Prashant Kumar Singh
• July 23, 2009
• IDSA Comments

The landslide victory of the Awami League led by Sheikh Hasina in the December 29, 2008 parliamentary elections ended the two-year old political uncertainty in Bangladesh and marks the return of a democratic government. With 262 seats out of 299 for the Awami League-led Grand Alliance, Sheikh Hasina is entrusted with the onus of opening a new era in the history of Bangladesh. The mandate clearly shows that people voted to power the party that won the country’s independence from Pakistan, and rejected the BNP-led four-party combine which got only 32 seats.

• M. Shamsur Rabb Khan
• January 09, 2009
• IDSA Comments

• Gurinder Singh
• March 2008
• Strategic Analysis

Statistics reveal that the Border Security Force (BSF) has so far, this year, apprehended 8,196 persons who were trying enter India illegally from Bangladesh. The numbers that successfully manage to evade the security forces on the border, is of course, much larger. Apart from the usual suspects, the militants and economic migrants, the recent political turmoil in Bangladesh has also resulted in many Bangladeshi political dissidents and people from the religious minorities attempting to sneak into India to avoid political and religious persecution.

• Pushpita Das
• December 08, 2006
• IDSA Comments

The management of India's international border along its North Eastern States has remained a crucial and complex issue. In an age of increasing interdependence, threats from unconventional sources pose a greater challenge to the country's security. An unmanaged border accentuates such threats by providing easy points of ingress and egress. Travel along India's borders with Bangladesh, Myanmar and Bhutan highlights the porous nature of these borders, which pass through difficult terrain of forest, rivers and mountains and make the task of guarding all the more challenging.

• Shanthie Mariet D’Souza
• July 18, 2006
• IDSA Comments

Assam, a strategic border state of India, witnessed the influx of migrants since the British period from then East Bengal, now Bangladesh. The influx was largely engineered by the British, given the economic rationale of cheap labour that the migrants provided for the sprawling tea estates in Assam. However, this issue of migration assumed political and communal overtones after independence, and continues to be an issue of concern.

• Namrata Goswami
• May 04, 2006
• IDSA Comments