The New Indian Express ·
Undocumented Dreamers
In West Bengal, more than 60 lakh voters were placed under adjudication after the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, while more than 63 lakh were deleted from the rolls by the time the post-SIR lists were published in February. With appeals still pending, the regime change in the state has only intensified doubts about identity and the documentation to prove it.
Journalist Nidhi Dugar Kundalia explores the state of unbelonging in The Undocumented, a book that follows people living precariously in a place that does not yet claim them. Set between 2009 and 2011, the narrative predates the current political anxieties over electoral rolls. At its centre is Safrat, a woman from the Bangladesh side of the Sundarbans, and her children, whose story begins long before the current debate over migration and identity.
In May 2009, Cyclone Aila tore through the Sundarbans, leaving behind a people without homes, livelihoods that could not be rebuilt and families forced to reckon with a landscape that had suddenly become unliveable. The disaster eventually became one thread in a much longer story that would take the writer from the Sundarbans to Kolkata's slums.
