Delimitation in focus as 2 South CMs talk reversing population policies

The statements have come after southern states have reported a total fertility rate (TFR) below the replacement level

Over the past three days, the chief ministers of two southern states have flagged concern about the region’s diminishing demographic dividend in the decades to come on account of the strides the South has made in population control.

The total fertility rate (TFR) of South India has dropped below the replacement level, bringing in train the economic challenges the region would face because of an ageing population as also the decline in its political influence after the delimitation of the Lok Sabha seats, which will be based on the data of the next census.

Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu and his Tamil Nadu counterpart M K Stalin have urged people to have more children, bringing into question the country’s decades-long policies on population management.

 

On Saturday, addressing a public gathering, Naidu said his government was mulling legislation to incentivise families to have more children, reversing earlier policies aimed at population control. He said an increase in the proportion of the elderly could strain the region’s economy as was being witnessed in Japan, China, and parts of Europe, where ageing populations outnumbered younger people.

On Monday, Stalin sought to frame the debate on population control in the context of the “threat” the delimitation process would pose to his state’s political influence.

Addressing a gathering at a mass wedding ceremony of 31 couples that the state government’s Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Department in Chennai organised, Stalin mentioned how blessings for newlyweds had changed over time. He said an old Tamil saying from the book Manamakkalukku enumerated 16 forms of wealth -- from cows and land to children and education. But with the likely reduction of South India’s share in parliamentary seats due to lower population growth rates, Stalin said in jest: “Why not aim for 16 children?”

“The Parliament delimitation process may encourage couples to have many children and give up thoughts of a small family. But whatever be the outcome, provide Tamil names to your children,” PTI quoted him as having said.

In a post on X, Congress General Secretary (Communication) Jairam Ramesh said the southern states were pioneers in family planning, and their success “should not be penalised” when the delimitation was undertaken once the “long-delayed census” is completed. “Will this (census) be used for allocation of seats in the Lok Sabha? There can be no doubt that success should not be penalised. Suitable formulae can be worked out to ensure that this does not happen,” Ramesh said. Other Congress leaders in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka have come out in support of Naidu and Stalin.

At the NITI Aayog’s ninth meeting -- chaired by Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi -- in New Delhi on July 27, Naidu had spoken of the need for the states to devise their own respective demographic management policies.

In his concluding speech, according to the official press statement, the PM “encouraged states to initiate ‘demographic management plans’ to address the issues of population ageing in future”.

A fortnight later, the Naidu-led government scrapped an earlier law that mandated that only those with not more than two children could contest local body elections. Several other states have similar “two child” norms, such as making those with more than two children ineligible for state-government jobs or debarring them from contesting local body elections. The states include Assam, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Maharashtra, and Odisha.

In February 2024, the Supreme Court had upheld a Rajasthan law as non-discriminatory because the intent was to promote family planning.

According to the fifth round of the National Family Health Survey (NFHS5) data, only three states -- Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, and Jharkhand -- have TFRs (the average number of live child births a woman will have in her life) more than the replacement level of 2.1. As Ramesh pointed out, birth rates have fallen sharply in the southern states. Kerala was the first to reach replacement levels of fertility in 1988, followed by Tamil Nadu in 1993, Andhra Pradesh in 2001, and Karnataka in 2005. He said the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led government amended the Constitution (Article 82) in 2001 to make the readjustments in the Lok Sabha dependent on the publication of the first census taken after the year 2026, which in the normal course would have taken place after the 2031 Census.