Overpopulation in India is a hydra-headed challenge. So it is heartening that recent figures point towards stability. According to the Sample Registration System data 2020, India’s general fertility rate — the number of children born per 1,000 women in the reproductive age group of 15-49 in a year — has declined by 20 per cent over the last decade. The average GFR stands at 68.7 for 2018-2020 whereas, for 2008- 2010, it was 86.1. The falling GFR can be attributed to several structural interventions, such as increase in the age of marriage, improved literacy rate among women, and easy and wider availability of modern contraceptive methods, among others. The SRS data are in line with those of the National Family Health Survey-5 that illustrated India’s total fertility rate — births per woman of reproductive age — fell from 2.2 in 2015-16 to 2.0 in 2019-2021. This momentum of a fall in fertility rates is bound to have positive connotations for the country whose population is set to surpass that of China by 2030. However, the dip in GFR is not uniform; it remains steeper in rural areas at 20.2 per cent compared to 15.6 per cent in urban areas. The TFR of a rural woman is 2.2 while that of an urban woman is 1.6. Therefore, it could be argued that while social and economic developments might be driving the decline in fertility rates nationally, literacy, economic empowerment, women’s awareness and agency remain disproportionately distributed, leading to anomalies. In fact, the SRS data reveal a yawning gap between illiterate and literate women with the latter registering a lower percentage of GFR at the national level. This is disconcerting. Asynchronous fertility rates cannot bring down the country’s population holistically.
Worryingly, the discourse on fertility has been weaponised particularly against minority communities, under the aegis of the Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party even though the NFHS-5 showed Muslims’ fertility rate to have declined the sharpest among all religious communities over the past two decades. The SRS data also show that Jammu and Kashmir — a Muslimmajority region — has recorded the steepest decline in GFR among all the states. This reiterates the need to scuttle polarising debates on population on the basis of empirical evidence. India must continue to invest in key deterrents to rein in its population further without paying any attention to spurious rhetoric.