The strong reaction to the Ministry of External Affairs’ statement that a “passport is a travel document, not a document of citizenship” suggests that the public has just about had it with the Narendra Modi government’s assault on its rights. While the MEA’s stand is technically correct, it encapsulates the many ways this unchecked and unbalanced government has flipped the burden of accountability onto the people, unleashing arbitrariness and tyranny at every turn.
The Modi government has consistently tried to create a class of subjects who inhabit a zone of uncertainty. They are left dependent on the mai-baap sarkar not just for minimal welfare, but also for recognition of their own existence. To transform citizens into subjects, you have to attack the very idea of citizenship, stability and secure belonging that people need in their daily lives. Contrast this with the UPA’s rights-based approach, whether in education, employment or voting.
Recall Assam’s National Register of Citizens (NRC) that left 19 lakh people – Hindus and Muslims – in a legal limbo that continues. Or the two-tiered religion-based citizenship that the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) signifies. Or the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in West Bengal that excluded 27 lakh people, despite them possessing the documents needed to remain on the rolls, via a newly created ‘logical discrepancies’ category. Conveniently, SIR deletions account for a significant portion of the 14.8 per cent vote swing in West Bengal towards the BJP in the 2026 Assembly election.
Citizenship, of course, is the foundation of what it means to be Indian. It is the very “right to have rights”, to be a valid member of the political community, to be owed basic rights and not to be vulnerable to the arbitrary exercise of power. In the Modi years, this premise has been greatly eroded.
For instance, to get paid for MGNREGA (now VB-G RAM G) work, the working poor must successfully pass digital face-recognition scans and Aadhaar biometric fingerprint matching. However, systemic failures like server outages or poor network connectivity frequently mark them as absent or unverified, robbing them of their hard-earned daily wages. Those unable to register are either deleted or unable to sign up for work, and account for up to 27 per cent of all MGNREGA workers. Satellite imagery now determines an adivasi’s claim to forest rights, rather than being a supplementary input as it’s supposed to be under the law. Rather than improving efficacy, the over-reliance on biometrics and technology has disempowered lakhs and reduced bureaucratic accountability.
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Anger against Modi is visible
If you think this manufactured chaos only affects the poor, think again. Former newspaper editor R Rajagopal was one of the 27 lakh people denied the right to vote in the West Bengal election because of ‘logical discrepancies’. Because he was off the list, the police delayed the verification of his passport renewal application, making him miss his daughter’s wedding in the US.
This delay occurred despite the Supreme Court’s directive that exclusion from electoral rolls “does not amount to a determination of citizenship in the strict sense” and that any action that follows should be “confined to electoral consequences alone’. The reason, the judgment points out, is that “citizenship involves elements of identity, belonging, and legal personality” that extend beyond the right to vote.
The Modi government’s signature style is to cast everything as an emergency to justify its own self-interested actions. Think of note ban, the pain it inflicted on ordinary people, and the lives it threw into disarray — for zero public gain.
And so, unchecked and unbalanced, this government doesn’t feel it has an obligation to its citizens. In fact, it thrives on creating conflicts and painting objectors as anti-nationals. The Modi government tells us we’re always in grave danger, preyed on by sinister foreign conspiracies and internal enemies. And who are the ‘enemies’? Farmers, Muslims, people who think OBCs should be counted in the census and now students. That is, us.
The latest such enemy is the ‘ghuspaithiya’. The UPA legally deported nearly 90,000 illegal Bangladeshi immigrants in cooperation with Border Guard Bangladesh.
Meanwhile, the number deported by the government of Modi under Home Minister Amit Shah is only a tiny fraction of that, and even those have often been carried out through illegal pushbacks, with a high rate of misidentification. The Modi government is less interested in solving the problem of illegal immigration — a legacy issue from a time when Bangladesh was much poorer than India — and more in reaping electoral gains through polarisation and dog-whistling.
All of this works, until it stops working. Observe the hostility on social media towards Modi himself, his swanning and his hugplomacy. The anger and despair among the youth over cancelled exams and lack of jobs is there for all to see. Nothing is certain in an electoral autocracy, but a groundswell of assertive citizens rather than obedient subjects is now becoming visible.
Amitabh Dubey is a Congress member. He tweets @dubeyamitabh. Views are personal.
(Edited by Prashant Dixit)