New Delhi: As the delimitation exercise approaches, and fertility rates in southern India remain below the national average, two chief ministers – Andhra Pradesh’s Chandrababu Naidu and Tamil Nadu’s M.K. Stalin – have sought to solve the impending demographic crisis by urging people to have more children.
While an ageing population poses risks of a shrinking workforce, slower economic growth and reduced political representation in parliament, the clarion call to have more children raises concerns of depriving women of their bodily autonomy. These statements have also belied deeply patriarchal attitudes of the political class that places the burden of family planning on women alone and threatens decades of progress in population stabilisation.
In his speech on October 20, Naidu urged people living in South Indian states to have more children and also announced that the Andhra Pradesh government is mulling reversing a law that barred those with more than two children from contesting local body elections, in a bid to incentivise larger families. He then went a step further to state that having larger families is a “responsibility” and a “service to society”.
“We have a demographic advantage only till 2047. After 2047, there will be more elderly people than young in Andhra Pradesh. It is already happening in Japan, China, and many countries of Europe,” he was quoted as saying. “Having more children is also your responsibility. You are not doing it for yourself, it is also for the benefit of the nation, it is a service to society.”
Two days later, his counterpart in Tamil Nadu, Stalin, concerned about the South’s potential loss of parliamentary seats in the upcoming 2026 delimitation exercise quipped: “Why not aim for 16 children?”
Poonam Muttreja, executive director, Population Foundation of India, told The Wire that statements urging women to have more children in the name of national duty reduce women to their reproductive roles, infringing on personal choice and agency.
“This rhetoric ignores women’s health, economic burdens and aspirations beyond motherhood. It also reinforces outdated gender stereotypes, putting pressure solely on women, while overlooking male responsibility in family planning,” she said.
“Global experience shows that telling women to have more children simply doesn’t work. The number of children a woman has is influenced by many factors such as education, economic opportunities, social context and access to healthcare. It is not a switch that can be flipped at will. Southern states like Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and Andhra Pradesh have achieved lower fertility rates thanks to investments in education, healthcare and women’s empowerment. The chief ministers’ and political leaders’ calls threaten decades of progress in population stabilisation and women’s empowerment.”
Why the call for more children
Total fertility rate (TFR) – which is the average number of children a woman is expected to have over her lifetime – in southern states like Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh are well below the replacement level of 2.1, with projections showing TFRs stabilising around 1.5 by 2036. In comparison, northern states like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh have higher TFRs (ranging from 1.85 to 2.38).
The Wire has reported that as a result, these southern states will experience rapid ageing, declining productivity, a higher dependency ratio and increased burden on social services like healthcare and pensions. Politically, this demographic challenge can have an electoral impact: South Indian states stand to lose parliamentary seats in the next delimitation exercise.
In 1976, based on the 1971 census figures, a freeze on delimitation was imposed to protect states, which had reduced their population growth rates through family planning, from losing seats to states with higher population growth. In 2001, the freeze was extended to 2026.
Also read: Whose Womb Is It Anyway?
The impending delimitation exercise has also sparked concerns as a state’s population significantly influences the allocation of central funds, directly impacting its financial health – a concern that has already been a point of contention between Southern states and the Union government.
According to women activists, these concerns, while important, cannot be resolved by making it a cross for women to bear.
Burden of family planning on women
Mass sterilisation, mostly of men, as a part of family planning measures was seen during the Emergency under former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. The vasectomy drive or nasbandi was seen as one of the contributing factors to her government’s fall in 1977. Estimates say that 6-8 million people were sterilised in India in 1977.
In the following decades, the burden of family planning shifted to women. This is clear from the Union government’s own data which shows that female sterilisation is the most common means to prevent unwanted pregnancies. According to the Union government’s National Family Health Survey (NFHS)-5 (2019-2021), female sterilisation in both urban and rural areas for currently married women between 15-49 years is recorded at 37.9% against male sterilisation at 0.3%. The use of other non-surgical means is recorded even lower with condoms (9.5%), pills (5.1%), IUDs (2.1%) and injectables (0.6%).
The NFHS-5 data also states that more than one-third of men believe that contraception is women’s business and that men should not have to worry about it. It adds that only 10% of women make independent decisions about their healthcare, against 33% men.
In 2014, 18 women were killed in a sterilisation camp in Chhattisgarh’s Bilaspur district where tubectomies were conducted in conditions that would be unacceptable in a veterinary hospital. The incident spotlighted India’s aggressive family planning measures and its disproportionate impact on women’s health, particularly those from poor socio-economic backgrounds, including incentives to get such sterilisation procedures.
“Social, political and economic systems reinforce male authority, limiting women’s financial and reproductive independence,” said Muttreja.
“Women face maternity penalty in the form of economic and professional discrimination for becoming mothers, with many employers hesitant to hire or promote women due to perceived costs and disruptions of maternity leave.”
‘Smacks of patriarchy and apathy’
Zakia Soman, a women’s rights activist, said that the call given by two seasoned politicians, “smack of their own patriarchy, apathy towards women, towards those from poor socioeconomic backgrounds.”
“While their concerns about ageing populations and getting marginalised are valid, is this the way forward? When you ask people to have more children it is of course women,” she said.
“As though they are not aware of the burden that falls on women. If 85% of India’s labour force is in the informal sector, all women are working women. They work inside the house and outside the house without any government support. Such statements deprive women of their agency further as they are already [in] second class positions even in a marital relationship and male entitlements include dowry as a continuing demand along with domestic violence – particularly women from deprived socio-economic backgrounds. Even if these southern states are relatively more advanced, it is not as though there is no poverty, or malnutrition or lack of education or instances of the girl child not being able to fulfil their human potential,” Soman said.
Economists Ashwini Deshpande and Rajesh Ramachandran have found that children from historically marginalised communities like Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs) are 50% more likely to be stunted than children from forward castes.
In 2016, the Supreme Court banned mass sterilisations after a petition was filed following such surgeries being performed under torchlight on at least 53 Dalit women in Bihar’s Araria in 2012.
Shalin Maria Lawrence, a Dalits rights activist and author, said sterilisation and population measures have disproportionately affected Dalits while maternal mortality, teenage pregnancies, poverty in pregnancies, malnutrition and postpartum depression remain grave concerns.
“Questions about delimitation can be taken up legally in the courts of law and constitutionally in parliament. Instead, you are turning to women and saying produce more children. It is very irresponsible of two chief ministers and party heads who are men. Women are already being moral policed to give birth – not having children is a problem and not having more children is also a problem.
“At the end of the day, patriarchy finds a way to sustain itself. Here it wants to use delimitation as a base to sustain itself and thrive in it. Instead of finding a solution to liberate women from the burden of bearing a child they are burdening them more by saying have more children – this is state oppression,” she said.
Women friendly policies
Instead of simply pitching for larger families, population experts believe that India could benefit from implementing policies that support women.
“India could benefit from policies that genuinely support women and families, similar to approaches in countries like Japan, South Korea, Denmark and Sweden which also face low fertility rates,” said Muttreja.
“These countries focus on women-centric policies such as childcare support, parental leave and financial incentives for families. Denmark and Sweden have stabilised fertility rates by promoting gender equality, shared childcare responsibilities and strong social support systems. By prioritising policies that make parenthood more manageable, India could create an environment where families feel empowered to have children by choice rather than through electoral pressures.”
In an International Monetary Fund (IMF) paper titled ‘She is the Answer’ in 2016, Yuko Kinoshita and Kalpana Kochhar, wrote that women can help offset the problems of an ageing population and a shrinking workforce.
“Although greater participation by women is crucial for countries regardless of where they fall along the path of demographic transition, for those whose population is rapidly ageing, the female labour supply is indispensable,” they wrote.
The paper states that when more women earn, households can support more children which can also reflect changes in social attitudes towards working mothers, child care and fathers’ involvement. Public policies such as better parental leave and availability of child care also help.
“In the early phase of a demographic transition, women who join the labour force may choose to have fewer children. As the population shrinks, a further decline in fertility is no longer desirable or sustainable over the medium term, so policies and society at large must help support conditions that enable more women to balance work and family,” they add.
‘Different but valid considerations’
According to former chief election commissioner S.Y. Quraishi, while both Stalin and Naidu have called for larger families, their considerations have been different.
“Both chief ministers’ reasons are valid but different. For Stalin it is delimitation and political considerations, but for Naidu it is economic and social consideration,” he said.
“The reason why parliament imposed a freeze on delimitation in 1971 is still valid – that northern states are still recording higher TFR than southern states. So in my view, the freeze on delimitation should be extended.”
“If people do not do family planning, it is unfair to women who are subjected to repeated pregnancies. Concerns around high birth rate for women’s health and safety is definitely a very valid question and that is also relevant for northern states where birth rates are already high. I would say, in a mission mode, work should be done to reduce populations in states like Bihar and UP and bring their TFR to 2.1,” he added.