A decade after India attained independence, Aldous Huxley, an English writer and philosopher, was deeply pessimistic about the future of Indian culture that he had studied and long admired. Expressing his pessimism, he wrote a letter to his friend, Grover Smith: “India is almost infinitely depressing, for there seems to be no solution to its problems in any way that any of us (would) regard as acceptable, the prospect of overpopulation, underemployment, growing unrest, social breakdown, followed, I suppose, by the imposition of a military or communist dictatorship.”
It is noteworthy that Huxley puts “overpopulation” at the top of his list of Indian problems. Indeed, in the 1950s, shortly after independence, India’s population stood at 361 million. This figure more than tripled to 1.2 billion in 2011, representing the combined population of the US, Indonesia, Brazil, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Japan. By April, 2023, India’s population reached 1.4 billion, surpassing China’s, to make it the world’s most populous country. However, over the years, India has taken many effective steps to curb population rise.
In 1952, India became the world’s first country to launch a National Programme for Family Planning, to slow population growth rate by lowering fertility that is defined as the average number of children born to a woman if she experiences the current fertility pattern throughout her reproductive age spanning 15-49 years. Consequently, India’s decadal population growth rate decreased from 25 per cent during 1971-81 to 22 per cent in 1991-2001 and to 18 per cent in 2001-11. The Economic Survey 2018- 19 mentioned that India is set to witness a sharp slowdown in population growth in the next two decades.
Total fertility rate (TFR) represents the number of children that would be born to a woman if she were to live to the end of her child-bearing years and bear children in accordance with age-specific fertility rates of the specified year. India has made remarkable progress in lowering TFR. It is one of the most important indicators for determining population growth and stability, with a low TFR being linked to increased income per capita and lower poverty rates. The third National Family Health Survey (NFHS-3), 2005-2006, was a large-scale, and multi-round survey conducted throughout the country as a representative sample of households. Data gathered from the survey show that TFR was 2.7.
The value dropped to 2.2 in NFHS-4, 2015-2016. The latest NFHS-5, 2019-2021, shows that India’s TFR has declined to 2 ~ below the replacement level of 2.1 children per woman. When TFR is greater than 2.0, the population in a given area will increase, and when it is less than 2.1, it will eventually decrease. In other words, if fertility drops below the replacement level, the population declines as each generation does not replace the previous one. The fall in India’s TFR is not consistent across the country.
Five of the country’s 28 States and eight union territories have a TFR exceeding 2.1, as revealed from NFHS- 5. They are Bihar (3), Meghalaya (2.9), Manipur (2.2), Jharkhand (2.3) and UP (2.4). In all southern states, on the other hand, TFR is well below the replacement level of 2.1. The rate is 1.8 in Tamil Nadu, 1.7 in Karnataka, 1.8 in Kerala, 1.7 in Andhra Pradesh and 1.8 in Telangana. This is true for both urban and rural areas of southern states. The southern states’ lower TFR can be attributed to their early investments in education, healthcare, and women’s empowerment.
States having TFR well below replacement level have reason to be worried about the rise in aging population and dependency ratio. The 2021 “Longitudinal Ageing Study in India”, which is a national survey on the status of the aging population in India, found that 12 per cent of India’s population comprises elderly individuals. This is projected to rise to 319 million by 2020, growing annually at 3 per cent. World Bank data shows that this figure is 47 dependents per 100 working-age population. The dependency ratio is expected to rise due to the growing elderly population and declining TFR.
The southern and western states will see their dependency ratios rise steadily as their populations age and their workforces shrink. Obviously, a higher dependency ratio places greater financial burden on the working -age population and on the state to provide welfare. According to the World Health Organization, infertility affects an estimated 27.5 million Indian couples. It is a topic still wrapped in silence and stigma ~ especially in a society where having children is closely linked to marriage, identity, and social acceptance. Moreover, public sector support for fertility treatment is limited and private care also seems to be expensive and largely unregulated.
However, by addressing systemic barriers of all types and enabling people to achieve their fertility goals, India can lead the way towards a more just and resilient demographic future. When it comes to the ideal family size, the story is strikingly consistent. Across India, most people ~ around 41 per cent of women and 33 per cent of men ~ prefer two children. Only a small share prefers one and even fewer want more than three. Economic pressure seems to be the biggest hurdle on the way to having larger families. Societies are deeply marked by gender inequality vis-a-vis sex ratio, a reality often highlighted by thinkers, leaders and activists who call for justice and reform.
Inequality between women and men has many faces and appears in many forms. Nobel laureate Amartya Sen has mentioned in The Argumentative Indian: “It has been widely observed that, given similar health care and nutrition, women tend typically to have lower age-specific mortality rates than men.” It is interesting that even female fetuses tend to have a lower probability of miscarriage than the male fetuses. Even though, everywhere in the world, more male babies are born than female babies and an even higher proportion of male fetuses are conceived than female fetuses, in those places in which men and women receive similar health care and attention, the overabundance of men is gradually reduced and then reversed.
As of 2024-2026 the US states’ population consists of slightly more females than males, with a national ratio of approximately 97 to 98 males per 100 females. Europe generally has more women than men with approximately 104.4 women for every 100 men. In contrast with this scenario, in many regions of the world, girls receive less ~ sometimes far lesser ~ care. In India, deeply rooted cultural and economic preference for a son, stemming from patriarchy, has created a significantly skewed sex ratio ~ roughly 933 females per 1000 males. Sen first coined the term “missing women” in 1990 and his concept of “missing women” is a demographic and ethical argument highlighting the severe gender imbalance caused by neglect, mortality, and preference for a son in several Asian and North African countries.
Sen estimated that more than 100 million women were missing from the population ~ meaning they would have been alive if these regions had the same female-to-male ratio as sub-Saharan Africa or the West. Building on Sen’s approach, it has been estimated that the number of missing women has steadily risen from 61 million to 121 million between 1970 and 2010. This increase is faster than that of the world population, with China and India accounting most for the deficit in women.
The percentage of missing girls during pre-birth period (mainly by sex selection followed by MTP) and during the post-birth period (mainly inadequate care) for some Indian states has been shown in the table alongside:
(See Table) A balanced sex ratio is crucial for social stability, sustainable population growth, and gender equity. In India, the demographic journey has predominantly moved from crisis to choice.
(The writer is a retired IAS officer)