CAA vs NRC, The National Divide

As protests against CAA picked up during the last one month, it is remarkable to observe what people were searching on Google. Here are some observations

• Between the two, NRC Made up for 60% of the search Volumes, CAA made up for the rest
• NE States were focussed a lot on CAA given their worries of demographic change - The States where CAA dominated NRC included - Mizoram, Meghalaya, Arunachal, Assam and Nagaland. CAA also dominated Goa where increasingly citizens are worried about being dominated by outsiders. In the NE, Sikkim and Manipur were exceptions where NRC dominated.
• The States with where NRC dominated significantly include - Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand, Andhra and MP. Others too were quite high.

Not surprisingly Bengal was on top of the list, not just because it is likely to be the next state for NRC but also because of the local politics around NRC.

What were people searching for with respect to CAA?

• Full Form of CAA
• CAA NRC
• CAA Bill

What were people searching for with respect to NRC?

• NRC CAA
• NRC Full form

It seems most citizens did not have a clue at all about CAA/NRC and had to first learn what it was before forming an opinion.

Given that there have been protests across the country, where were people tracking protests the most?

• Delhi
• Nagaland
• Meghalaya
• Karnataka
• Haryana

Where were people tracking protests the least?

• MP
• Bihar
• AP
• Rajasthan
• Odisha

There were many States where the tracking was quite low.

Bihar and AP were interesting because while topical engagement was high, the desire to track protests wasn't.

Overall it appears that while North East Citizens are very concerned about CAA, the rest of the country was more concerned around NRC. Further, most did not appear to have had any idea about both CAA and NRC and bulk of the searches were about understanding the issue itself in the first place. Separate from NRC and CAA, CrowdWisdom360's topical quizzes are giving us a sense that when it comes to any issue, citizens are able to accurately answer only 50% of the questions. So one could argue that many Citizens are making opinions inspite of not knowing half the information accurately. Food for thought!