I am what they call the elite, or to be more descriptive, I belong to the oppressor caste and class group, the state usually does not knock on our doors for it thinks, (rightly so), this group is a collaborator. It is also this position which allows me to be an observer. But sometimes the state does knock on our doors, perhaps to check if one is in line, remind us that no one is beyond its sphere of influence, or just to maintain a façade of equality of citizenship. Recently, the state knocked on our doors twice, once for a brief encounter of enumeration, the census, the second time for an elaborate dance of Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, each time it exposed the devious ways in which it plays the carrot and stick game of citizenship. The dates for Booth Level Officer (BLO) house visit for SIR in Telangana were initially set from June 25 to July 24. It has now been extended to August 3. Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty.A woman in her late thirties, along with her teenage son, an unpaid assistant to help her with technology visited to enumerate us for census. This was an additional duty for the government employees, often as is the case, not with any significant rewards. With the inadequate training systems, there was an additional burden of ‘cracking’ the technology, which led to their Gen Z or Gen Alpha children becoming their helpers. ‘This is just initial recruitment questionnaire, the actual enumeration will be done later,’ they said, and after the questionnaires were filled, casually discussed amongst themselves, ‘oh we seem to be entering a Muslim area, what a nuisance! Who knows if they will even give accurate details!’ The rampant Islamophobia which has been carefully cultivated by the Indian society over many decades, operates this way through its technologically untrained but ideologically trained instruments.Also read: How EC Has Quietly Changed Form 6 During SIR, Evading ParliamentAnd the whole cycle follows, the enumerator suspicion and conceit for the ‘lesser citizens,’ and perhaps their conscious misrepresentation in the surveys, the disinterest to ‘visit their houses’ and then further the blame that ‘this community’ does not give accurate details.The second time the state knocked on our door was for SIR, which seems to have the power to flip elections, or the more important thing for the elite, take away our passports, our ticket to escape. Before the SIR forms reached my house, the worries of the people reached me. Each time I visited a photocopy shop, there were worried citizens, mostly people belonging to the Muslim community, or minority groups who were asking the photocopier various questions, ‘So what documents do we give?’ ‘But I can’t find my father’s card,’ ‘will a letter from the masjid be enough?’ ‘Will you be able to fill our form?’ ‘I have filled wrong details, is it possible to get another form?’Further, there were all kinds of fears doing rounds, ‘If your name does not feature, they will stop giving ration,’ ‘Adhaar will also be revoked.’ SIR was the next ‘soft’ blow on the populace battered by the Citizenship Amendment Act–National Register of Citizens (CAA–NRC) which had driven the point loud and clear, the Muslim community can be stripped off their citizenship anytime. When the forms did reach me, they seemed quite straight forward; my arrogant English educated-self thought that people were perhaps confused unnecessarily. I filled the details and went to the BLO’s assistant, a Muslim man who was trying to help everyone so that he could contest for the colony elections. He was shocked that I filled the form with a pen, ‘how come you filled this form with a pen, without consulting, these are not the details you are supposed to fill,’ he said. But how can one’s name be filled any differently, I wondered, only to realise, there are at least twenty ways it could be done.Also read: ‘Conduct an Open, Online Public Hearing’: Forum for Electoral Integrity to NHRC on SIR IrregularitiesNames are difficult. There are names, middle names, and surnames which are markers of caste; and each of them written in various permutations and combinations on various documents such as Adhaar, PAN card, ration card, and so on. One has an initial, one has the full name, and another everything in the right order but with a vowel mistyped. Sometimes the same surname can be spelt in seven different ways in English. In the SIR, the state expects uniformity across all documents, which seems like an impossible standard to achieve, for each of these documents were made at different points in a person’s life, and are reflective of the mistakes made by the officials issuing those cards at that point in time.Representational image: A Booth Level Officer (BLO) verifies voter details with a resident during a door-to-door survey as part of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls in Thane, Maharashtra on July 16, 2026. Photo: PTI.From this point, it took me about a week to understand what exactly the form was asking, I still have significant doubts if I got it right. For a few days I was in disbelief, it seemed illogical, ‘How is it possible that they are asking me for the details of what was in my electoral card of 2002. Who knows what happened 24 years earlier, life changes so many times over,’ and the practical problem that I was a teenager and did not have an electoral card then, ‘You need to fill your parents’ details, or your grand parents details,’ he said. As I made many trips to the BLO and his assistant, and briefly ended up becoming their helper by filling forms for the unlettered, I heard so many stories about all the existential issues this form was bringing up. ‘My parents died young, I only know their names, don’t have their cards,’ said a sixty-year-old, it was confusing for him that after having painstakingly built his life for six decades, somehow his parents’ details mattered more than what he did. ‘I don’t know my grand parents’ names,’ he said, in a slightly dejected tone. Arundhati Roy compared the process of CAA-NRC to the Nazi legacy papers, a fitting comparison. Who in this country knows of their parents and grand parents and has papers of them. To know of your ancestors is a privilege, it means that they did not have to migrate, it means they had land or jobs which could sustain themselves and their next generations in the same area, who in this country can boast of that privilege. ‘Where did you live in 2002, we need the details of that time,’ the form asks, and many people I met simply said, ‘I did not have a home then, but now I do, can I give those details,’ and the state refused, it wanted to dig up the past which many wanted to desperately forget. Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty.The SIR created Kafkaesque situations where one had to time travel, much to people’s dismay. The poor and the working class have constantly been sold the hope of the future by capitalism, ‘You just need to work a bit more, and then you can escape this rut,’ the state, corporations, and advertising seem to constantly say. The subtext being, look towards the future, do not ask tough questions about the past, but now this exercise seems to challenge this belief, snatch even that hope of the present and future from them, ‘Why do we need to give details from 2002, why about our parents and grandparents, why not about now!’ Many simply did not have time to participate in this choreography of the state, ‘I work on all days of the week, my employer does not give me time off,’ then how does the state expect them to do this archaeological exercise, was not clear to many. Women were in a special kind of no (wo)man’s land, ‘My daughter is married, so I should not be filling their form right? I’m worried my son in law will get angry if I fill this, because now she is not mine, she belongs to them,’ worried a working-class woman. Between the belonging, ownership, and disowning of the maternal and marital homes, and the lost agency of self, many a woman are left out in the SIR. While on paper, those whose names do not appear in the rolls have a chance to challenge it, this again assumes luxury of time, effort, resources, and information; as MP Asaduddin Owaisi said, the poor might lose their electoral rights on account of being poor. On the other end, the BLOs who were thrust upon this humungous task in a very short time are also the direct victims of it. ‘The whole day I keep searching for names, by the end of the day I don’t know what I’m doing,’ the BLO shared, filling yet another form. The stress levels of this task have led to multiple deaths, yet another collateral damage. Inspite of these many disenfranchisements, there was an underlying understanding that the state is sending them all on a wild goose’s chase, ‘They first said Aadhaar was not compulsory, then we needed it to even get a mobile number, then came to connecting it with gas, bank account, pan card, and now this..’ they wondered what was being hidden from them as they busily looked for various kinds of papers. C. Yamini Krishna is the author of Film City Urbanism in India. Hyderabad from princely city to global city, 1890-2000 and the curator of the Zore Project. She is currently working on a book project on the intellectual history of Zore.