Route 1 consequence is political, not demographic → eight states, some 220 ethnic groups → who belongs stays permanently open → nation-building carries the cost

Route 2 migrants share language and ethnicity → identification hard → belonging becomes the region’s open question → the cost is political, not demographic

identification hard → land and jobs → ethnic conflict → Weiner, sons-of-the-soil → AASU agitation → Assam Accord 1985 → NRC → Tripura tribes a minority → cut-off keeps moving: 1971 → 2014 CAA → 2024 Exemption Order → AASU reads Accord displaced → forged voter cards → elites mobilise feeling against migrants → security costs: militants among migrants, trafficking, Myanmar frontier → FMR gone, fencing begun → hill communities split by the line oppose it → remedy breeds grievance → detection outruns due process → 1950 Act, DC decides in ten days, Tribunals bypassed → Supreme Court stays, 2026, fair determination → Murshid: pushbacks and Dhaka reset as one policy at two levels

Baruah locates it differently → Northeast as a frontier shaped by migration and settlement → detection alone cannot settle belonging

Route 1 four decades on → migrants remain → question open

Route 2 remedy breeds grievance → detection outruns due process → belonging still unsettled