On 25th August, 2019, Studio Nilima: Collaborative Network for Research and Capacity Building in a joint initiative with Axom Xahitya Xabha and Nanda Talukdar Foundation organised a democratic dialogue between various civil society stakeholders on the post National Register of Citizens (NRC) scenario in Assam. The roundtable titled “Assam After NRC: Quest for Knowledge” was held at Bhagawati Prasad Barua Bhawan at Guwahati and was attended by 23 stakeholders and experts. Moderated by Mr. Nilay Dutta, President, Studio Nilima and Mr. Mrinal Talukdar, Secretary, Nanda Talukdar Foundation, the event saw a cross section of unanimous and divergent opinions on issues such as law and order implications after the publication of National Register of Citizens (NRC), detention procedures, rights of the indigenous vis-à-vis rights of the declared foreign national, legal aspects of the laws related to citizenship among others. The meeting also noted the biased portrayal of the Assamese community in the international media and digital news platforms in India and analysed the reasons for this state of affairs. Noting that the coming days after the publication of the.. Read More DetailedProceedings.pdf

The landmark Assam Accord of 15th August, 1985 provided that constitutional, legislative and administrative safeguards shall be provided to protect, preserve and promote the cultural, social, linguistic identity and heritage of the Assamese people. Over the years there has been a clamour for framing and solidifying these constitutional safeguards being catalyzed by the political and social upheavals. However, most of these have been in the form of media and press statements which have been vague in nature seeking wide ranging safeguards relating to land and political rights, which have largely remained inconsequential because essentially there has been no consolidation of the voices of the stakeholders which can lead to a charter of demands. The objective of this on-going project therefore is to consolidate the views of the stakeholders into a comprehensible whole and present it in the form of a draft statute which will be envisaged as a draft for a potential constitutional amendment. In doing so, it strives to plug an important gap between civil society and the state institutions and also provide strategic inputs.

The question of land is one of the most immediate, urgent and burgeoning problem in Assam today. Seventy years after the transition to democracy and commencement of land reforms, Assam with its agrarian economy and its history of colonization, continues to implode under the weight of unaddressed or poorly addressed needs for land reforms, its agrarian structure barely altered. Access to land has become a matter of critical significance in Assam. If left unaddressed, the conflicts surrounding land poses the most direct threat to development and disintegration of the social, political and economic fabric of the State. Further, the land imbalance in Assam is stark enough to set aside debates on the necessity of land reform. The issue in Assam is not whether land reforms as a category are essential or redundant but as to what forms of land reforms are needed and for what purpose. This research will be of interest to all those interested in land policies in Assam- its past, present and future.