The concept and context of citizenship in India

Abstract

Citizenship is the most privileged kind of nationality since it allows people to live in the state in a pleasant, honourable, and harmonious manner. The term citizenship refers to the relationship between an individual and a state that entitle an individual with rights, duties, privileges and other benefits whereas noncitizens and migrated residents are denied or only partially provided.  Thus, Citizenship is the privilege of the marked citizens to get benefits from the government of India through welfare and developmental programmes but crores of unmarked citizens (people from various countries have been settling in India without citizenship) are getting same benefits and privileges on par with citizens as they are living in India. Thus, the government of india have introduced CAA and NRC which are useful to identify the unmarked citizens and to make the needful acts to control unmarked citizens. If the government is failed to control the unmarked citizens, then the actual target group (Below Poverty Line people) won’t get the privileges.In this context the paper examines its central themes—concept, context and present status of citizenship in India. The objectives of this paper are firstly to analyse the concept of citizenship; secondly, to elaborate the neutral laws of citizenship along with misconceptions of citizenship acts in India particularly in the context of minorities and refugees about rendering their citizenship in India. The study has collected secondary data both qualitative and quantitative data and analysed with descriptive analysis method.