The acceptance of a National Register of Citizens or NRC bill has created mayhem in India. The activities of vandalism are taking now and then afterwards. The environment is radically chaotic. However, these are some serious issues that you cannot take with blindfolded eyes.

But, this article is basically about the only proof that is acceptable for NRC. It is the birth certificate. The Modi-led government has announced that the birth certificate could be the only boat to sail across the NRC challenge.

IndiaSpend analysis shows that any document related to the date and place of birth is a concrete evidence of citizenship for the National Register of Citizens. The National Family Health Survey (NFHS-4) states that the birth of only three out of five children under the age of five had been registered in 2015-16. This statistics is much improved (i.e. 62.3%) if is compared with these registrations in 2005-06, i.e. 26.9%.

No birth registration was a sort of likelihood before 2005, which has become a norm today to prove your legal identity as a citizen of India. The aforementioned analysis also disclosed that the downtrodden families, especially for scheduled castes and tribes, are more likely to not have it.

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However, it is contradictory. But, what the Union Home Minister Amit Shah has said sounds different than that of what the Assam government has announced. The latter state government has declaimed any proof of date and place of birth in relation to the NRC is acceptable. The checklist includes-voter cards, passport, Aadhaar card, licences, insurance papers, school leaving certificates and document related to home and land.

On the flip side, the Union Home Minister in an interview on December 20, 2019 had a different saying, which apparently rejected Aadhaar, voter card and passport as a first proof of citizenship. Besides, the parents need not submit any documentation compulsorily.

A reputed human rights lawyer of Guwahati, Assam clarifies that the birth certificate is found one of the most popular linkage document. That’s why it is admissible as per the NRC for children. It is simply because it is the only document of minors that can be linked with parents’ document.

Unregistered births and deaths are a challenge

As of now, the government infrastructure is not conducive to launch NRC, according to Shamika Ravi (director of research at Brookings India) and Mudit Kapoor (an associate professor of economics at the Indian Statistical Institute, ISI, in The Indian Express). If considered the case of Assam, children below 18 do not have voter cards. If they have not been appeared in the Class 10 or 12 board exams, the only document to resort to is the birth certificate. Unfortunately, nearly 40 lakh people did not provide this proof. So, they were left out.

Moreover, the UNICEF has reported in 2019 that India is one of the countries wherein half of the world’s 166 million children live. Nearly 24 million children under 5 did not register their birth. On one side, the registration of Births and Death Act, 1969 mandates registry of every birth and death within 21 days. On the other side, its system named only 84.9% of all births and 79.6% of all deaths in 2017 in the register.

Amidst all these provisions and happenings, the unregistered birth could be legally registered. However, the register could be a census of the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI).

Reasons for unregistered birth

The count of birth registration has been up in 2017, i.e. 84.9%, which was just 76.4% in 2008 as per 2017 Vital Statistics of India based in Civil Registration System report. This rate was mere 56.2% in 2000. The states that topped the rank in the least registries are Uttar Pradesh (61.5%), Bihar (73.7%), Madhya Pradesh (74.6%) and Jammu & Kashmir (78.8%).

The so called reasons were inadequate staff, software glitches and network issues. The true reasons behind this flaw were the unaffordable infrastructure and poverty, which hampers the traveling to the nearest registration centre. Besides, there was no immediate demand pertaining to birth certificate for any social services of the government.

The poverty is another major cause of these unregistered births. The urban areas have 77% of all children who have their birth proofs, whereas only 56.4% of the children in rural areas have it. If you weigh the percentage of the richest wealth group with the poorest wealth group, the difference can make you dumbstruck. It is (82.3%-40.7%) 41.6%, as per NFHS-4.

Caste system and uneducated mother are a few more reasons of this happening.

In the nutshell, the new constitution has alarmed every Indian to register their child’s birth, although they live in India or in abroad. This is why the demand for this certificate is skyrocketing out of the blues.