THE other morning in New Delhi, the sun beat down on a small group of people outside the Bangladesh High Commission as they prepared to meet the diplomats inside, armed with a few sheets of paper. In the background, a few dozen activists shouted slogans demanding action against north-eastern insurgents who are based in Bangladesh. The mandatory press briefing was held for the television crews who shoved mikes in front of the band of members of Parlia-ment - six men and one woman - as they waited to be called in. These were MPs from the Asom Gana Pari-shad, the ruling regional party of Assam, but also from the Revolu-tionary Socialist Party, the Commu-nist Party of India as well as the Bha-ratiya Janata Party. More than 40 members of Parliament signed the appeal to the Bangladesh High Commissioner drawing attention to the "increased activities of the extremist organisations" of the North-East, operating out of Bangladesh.

TERRORISM
The issue of cross-border terrorism cuts across party lines and this development is something that Assam Chief Minister Prafulla Mahanta, who is given little credit for anything at all, can justifiably be pleased about. Over the years, Mahanta's strategy has been to forge a front with other parties in firmly opposing the presence of militants in Bhutan and Bangladesh and pressing for action against them. Despite failures in several sectors, he seems to have developed a consensus on this sensitive and strategic issue.

However, where Mahanta and his party have not succeeded in winning the support of other parties is over the question of illegal migration from Bangla-desh into the North-East, especially Assam. Assamese fears about the continuing influx of Bengali-speaking migrants (Hindu and Muslim) and how this is altering the demographic structure of the state and the rest of the region have been dismissed as xenophobia and worse by groups within the North-East, but especially in Bengal. The Bengali media is in no mean measure responsible for this irresponsible attitude to a national problem that has begun to haunt West Bengal itself.

Gone are the days of comfortable vote banks for the left and centrist parties: every society can receive immigrants to a threshold level. Once that threshold is passed - and it has been in Bengal just as it was many years earlier in Assam - they the host regards the new settler not merely as an intruder but a threat to his peace of mind, political control and prosperity. What strategies must be devised to deal with this new challenge?

The unheralded visit of Mrs Sadako Ogata, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, to India assumes significance in this search for answers. Mrs Ogata's visit is the first by the head of this humanitarian organisation to India. UNHCR has a presence in several parts of South Asia, where not one country has signed the 1950 Refugee Convention. But it has not been particularly welcome, despite its low profile activity.

India has said for long that this country's own traditions of tolerance and acceptance of refugees over the centuries has made adherence to any international convention redundant. Our record of welcoming and sheltering refugees from the neighbourhood - be it Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Tibet or Sri Lanka, to name four of the major refugee flows in the past 40 years - speaks for itself.

The Indian line has been: "We are capable of handling our own affairs, we don't need any international guidance or assistance". However, with diplomatic skill and sensitivity from both New Delhi and UNHCR, the latter has been able to help quietly with Sri Lanka's Tamil refugees in Tamil Nadu, assist in the settlement of Afghans in India as well as a handful of Burmese refugees.

CAMPS
UNHCR has also been playing a low-key but effective role in Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Bhutan as well as Nepal not to forget Pakistan (the Afghans) with outflows of Tamils from the Jaffna area, the Rohingyas fleeing from Myanmar to Bangladesh as well as Bhutanese of Nepali origin who are now sheltered in UNHCR camps in eastern Nepal.

Mrs Ogata's visit to India was low-key, unlike her other international trips, although she did meet External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh and Foreign Secretary Lalit Man Singh. What has clearly gone home to the UNHCR chief is that on the subcontinent, especially in India, refugees are not really a core issue. Migrants are. She clarified her position with vigour that cannot but have pleased South Block. It was not just political oppression or internal conflicts which lead to displacement but "poverty, underdevelopment and unemployment are also contributing to population movements in search of economic opportunities".

She spoke of the need to differentiate rigorously between the two with the need to develop, as in the case of Vietnam and its one million Boat People of the 1970s and 1980s, an overall action plan which guaranteed settlement for genuine refugees after a procedure which determined their status. The country of origin (in this case, Vietnam) "acknowledged their responsibility toward their citizens by agreeing to take back all non-re-fugees and ensure their safe and orderly return".

Will Bangladesh even consider admitting that millions of its people are in India and will it be prepared to take even a fraction them back if a resettlement package by international agencies was made at-tractive enough? Dhaka and its representatives will officially say: "There are no Bangladeshis in India". They know, as well as we do, that this is nonsense and have admitted to it in informal conversations.

MIXED FLOW
The critical issue that Mrs Ogata has flagged and which all governments in the region, especially India, Nepal and Bangladesh, will need to develop policies for is that of mixed migration flows, where the settlers are both refugees and economic migrants.

One has been advocating for long a procedure of work permits for migrant workers (valid for one year and extendable by another year with the photo identity, address and work location on such a permit) and the issuance of Identity Cards (the Election Commission cards which got halted in mid-process) for all Indians. This is not an easy process but is there an alternative? It is foolish for anyone to talk about ousting millions of "foreigners" from this country - the State has neither the capacity or the interest in doing so. It is time for innovative thinking that will face the problem squarely and work on specific ways in which it can be turned to India's advantage - and especially that of its distant and vulnerable North East.

No amount of talk about the rights of indigenous people will get us anywhere. It is time for specific, practical measures not flawed concepts of nationality and origin which create more confusion. Mrs Ogata's re-marks put the issues in an useful perspective.

The migration of people from one settlement to another, one nation to another is as old as humankind itself. People move as a measure of historic necessity.The history of the world is migration. Nothing can change that. The question is its management so that the rights of vulnerable communities at home are protected.

For this to happen, the Government of India must consider a legal regime to govern migration instead of dealing with it on an ad hoc basis and depending on a slew of old laws. Today's migrant could become tomorrow's terrorist.