NEW DELHI — Nearly two million people risk statelessness and detention after they were left off the final version of a registry of Indian citizens, part of a controversial exercise to identify suspected illegal migrants in the northeastern state of Assam.

The zebras had to be counted, and verified -- that much was certain. Higher authorities than myself decided that a world wide census must be taken, and taken soon. The situation was getting out of hand. Incidents were being reported everywhere. So measures had to be taken. This much was obvious to even the lowest cretin among us. And there were many cretins among us; they were good workers; obedient, docile, and willing to get their hands dirty at all times. 
We were also blessed with a large body of clerks keen to rise in the ranks and become media influencers. They scrupled at nothing when it came to enumerating and discriminating. They used trained algorithms to sniff out the imposters and troublemakers -- and these were the zebras that we needed to discover quickly and remove, before the recurring incidents became more frequent and widespread. 
As it turned out, it was all rather simple. The zebras peacefully gathered, were tallied, and it was quickly discovered that there were over two million of them that were not zebras at all. They failed to pass the zebra test that our perceptive clerks had devised. Plus they did not have the proper hoof prints. There's a subtle difference between the hoof prints of loyal zebras and those who are an unwholesome influence on the herd. I confess that I myself do not know how to make that determination, but we have an elite cadre of dedicated experts who do it all day long -- blindfolded and with their hands tied behind their backs.
For their own good, the non-zebras were swiftly taken from their own herds; otherwise the real zebras would have torn them hoof from hoof, so high had feelings become among the loyalist zebras. 
We were gentle and generous with the outcasts -- no one can say we were not!
They were shipped off to certain islands in the Aleutian Sea, where wooden barracks had been prepared for them. And to tide them over the harsh polar winter we provided bales of sawdust and tubs of mineral oil. 
That they were all dead by the next spring is no fault of ours. They obviously lacked the organizational skills to pull together and form a more perfect union.