The production of a ‘digital citizen’: citizen‐migrant conundrum through the National Register of Citizens in India

Abstract The article takes cognizance of a citizenship register called the National Register of Citizens (NRC) and comprehends it within the larger framework of a digital citizenship discourse. The NRC is a register that documents ‘authentic citizens’, based on documentary evidence, termed as the ‘legacy data’ (lineage of forefathers), and proof of residence of persons before a cut‐off date of 24 March 1971. In the regional context of Assam, the NRC co‐opts to the global sway of digitization of identities. The article examines how the digitization of citizenship defines eligibility for availing public services and thereby investigates the need to be included in a datafied citizenship repository that sorts and segregates citizens from non‐citizens. The digital infrastructure, thus created, is presented as a panacea for the unresolved and complex issue of illegal migration, doubtful voters and citizenship. The article explains that the NRC works within a digital systems and technologies surveillance framework to track, control and manage populations, segregating the ‘legitimate from the “illegitimate” or doubtful residents’. In so doing, it engages with the documentation exercise that records the lineage and identity of people to make welfare accessible to the digitized kins of the legitimate forefather citizen. It engages with the concept of residence and explores how a digital citizenship regime shapes the relationship between the state and its inhabitants.