If not passports, then what? Birth certificates? Aadhaar? EPIC cards? None are foolproof. Most Indians don’t have any of them. The Citizenship Act gives four pathways; birth, descent, naturalisation, registration; but no single document reliably confirms it. And when even official documents get discredited by the state itself, what does that say about our system? The real question isn’t legal; it’s existential. Who gets to be counted? And who decides? In a world where identity is increasingly digitised and disputed, India still lacks a citizen ID. That’s not bureaucracy. That’s a crisis waiting to happen.