Word: bangladesh
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...frontier fence, hoping that it will act as a bulwark against what the government in New Delhi perceives to be problems and threats on the other side. When finished, the Indian fence along the 2,500-mile (4,100 km) border with its eastern neighbor will all but encircle Bangladesh...
...India once welcomed refugees from Bangladesh. An estimated 4 million of them settled in India after the 1971 war that created its new neighbor. But their numbers have swelled to at least 10 million and a backlash has started. The fence, now two-thirds complete, was begun in earnest three years ago as a way to stop illegal migration and terrorist groups operating in the border areas. The siege of Mumbai - the most dramatic of more than a dozen deadly attacks on Indian cities in the past year - has turned the fence into a political imperative; it is presented...
...Regulating the Flow India's northeastern state of Assam shares only a short border with Bangladesh, but the sentiment there against Bangladeshi migration is more intense than anywhere else in India. Bengali-speaking Muslims, both Indian and Bangladeshi, were once brought in to work as seasonal labor, and they now account for more than 30% of the state's population. Their numbers have made them a significant political force and have generated a frustration that will sound familiar to any country dealing with a large influx of migrants from a poorer country. "They take all the jobs," says Shibshankar Chatterjee...
...state capital Guwahati on Oct. 30, 2008, killed more than 60 people, and local police say that militants agitating for an ethnic Bodo homeland, who have clashed violently with local Muslims, are to blame. In this environment, no one bothers to differentiate between the earlier, legal migrants from Bangladesh and newcomers. Says Goswami: "In Assam, if you're wearing a lungi or a beard, people say you're from Bangladesh...
...task of controlling both illegal migration into Assam - as well as militant groups such as ULFA that operate in the border areas - falls to the 160,000 troops of India's Border Security Force (BSF), half of whom guard the frontier with Bangladesh. At the biggest gateway between Assam and Bangladesh, a junction of the Brahmaputra River near a market town called Dhubri, the BSF's Water Wing patrols 24 hours a day by speedboat. Ferries carry laborers from the remote villages downstream to jobs in Dhubri, Guwahati or Siliguri, and each one is stopped by BSF guards, who check...