Come elections, and politicians raise issues which they will forget soon after. In Assam, every poll season sees politicians talk of the “foreigners” issue. Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee was thus merely sticking to the norm by warning the Assamese about the demographic threat posed by illegal migrants from Bangladesh. There is little doubt that the threat is real; it is not so clear if the political will to solve the problem is as real. In fact, decades of political ambivalence and administrative inaction seem to suggest that politicians see it more as an election ploy than a genuine concern. Mr Vajpayee’s own Bharatiya Janata Party has always sought to exploit the issue of the illegal influx of Muslims from Bangladesh to expand its support base in Assam or West Bengal. It comes in handy for a party that sees all kinds of threats from the minority community. Since the BJP has decided to go it alone in Assam in these elections, its anxiety to try and use the issue is understandable. No political party in the state has been able to ignore the problem of the illegal migrants, which sparked the blood-bath in Assam in the mid-Eighties.

What the parties or the governments in New Delhi and Guwahati have done to tackle the problem is a different story. The courts set up under the Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunals) Act to identify the foreigners became perpetually embroiled in litigation. But if the courts failed to do their job, it was mostly because there was no political and administrative determination to make them effective. The BJP, the Congress and the Asom Gana Parishad seemed to have been more interested in scoring political points than in helping the administration solve the problem. No wonder that these parties are still fighting with each other over the repeal of the IM(DT) Act, which is now pending with the Supreme Court. Neither the prime minister’s expression of concern nor a new law would change things unless there is a political will to tackle the problem seriously. Discussions with Dhaka, which routinely dismisses allegations of illegal migration from Bangladesh into India, have to be more meaningful than they have been so far. Assam cannot afford to live with this potentially explosive problem, while the politicians treat it only as a tool in their vote-bank politics. It would be as dangerous to use the issue to harass any particular community or bona fide citizens. Illegal migration into any state ought to be seen as a national problem. It may have grown to disturbing proportions in Assam, but it can only get worse if governments fail to act.