this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2024

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India: Why a nation of 1.45 billion wants more children (www.bbc.com)

submitted 2 days ago by MicroWave to c/world

16 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Summary

Despite surpassing China as the world’s most populous country, parts of India are encouraging higher birth rates due to concerns over declining fertility and rapid aging.

Southern states like Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, where fertility rates are below replacement levels, fear losing political representation and federal revenue after upcoming electoral boundary reforms.

India also faces challenges of an aging population with inadequate social infrastructure.

Experts call for policies promoting active aging, extended working years, and better use of India’s demographic dividend to address economic and social pressures.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

Fear of decline

Edit: after reading the article, it's about something else. Indian parlamentary seats depend on share of population, not on economic strengths, so some states worry to lose out.

Edit again: Well, no, my first instinct was right. The article is full of stupid people spitting hate at women for choosing to have fewer children. The article also seems to mostly think of offspring as future workforce, in other words slaves to the economy. The human population has been less than 1/1000 of what it currently is just a few thousand years ago (as can be seen in this diagram) and humanity prospered. I don't see the problem.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Even though I agree with your second edit, I have to say that the point you mentioned in the first edit is really a concern. India used to have a freeze on the 'share' of the national budget that each state will get. It was based on the population from the 1971 census. Now that has been changed to 2011 census data

Even though on the periphery it may look like this is the right thing to do, the problem is much more complex and nuanced. So there have been a lot of initiatives to control population growth in India, starting from 70s and reaching the peak in 90s. Southern states were more compliant and took good initiative to create awareness and enforce other measures. This is a broad generalisation, based on the south and north dichotomy. In general many Northern states were not very keen on that.

The problem is this resulted in a larger population growth in Northern states compared to southern states. So now when the Central Government wants to change the proportion, southern states find it unfair, because their effort in controlling the population in the past is kind of neglected. This problem gets amplified with the fact that the southern states make really good contributions to GDP.

But at the same time, as a nation it is the responsibility of the richer states to share and help the poorer state more, and help them to grow. Without this help even measures including population control and public health, cannot be implemented.

I think this is a bit similar to the issues in Catalonia, and Spain. They contribute much more to the GDP, but get less compared to this from the Government.

I really don't think there is a straightforward solution to this.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 23 hours ago

thanks, very well put. I'm not from India, but this explanation makes sense to me.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I mean, there’s an infrastructure problem that’s worth considering. With low enough population density, it could become no longer feasible or worth it to maintain large-scale, country/globe spanning infrastructure projects such as power grids or undersea fiber optic networks. This infrastructure didn’t matter much a few thousand years ago, but it’s pretty critical now, so the same rules don’t necessarily apply.

I don’t know how likely I consider this outcome to actually be, as you’d need a very steep decline, but it’s at least worth keeping in mind.

[–] skeezix 1 points 1 day ago

You mean that?

[–] [email protected] 42 points 1 day ago

nothing to do with the welfare of the current population. it has everything to do with those in power not wanting to lose that power. .

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Underfunded social security is a pyramid scheme and you always need more active workers than retirees.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/

more active workers than retirees.

Well, no, that's actually incorrect. You only need enough productive output to sustain a social welfare system; if people's productivity would increase to 10,000%, then 1% active workforce in the population could sustain up to 70% elderly people (assuming another 29% younger unproductive people).

It's just that society chooses to skim off that additional wealth to some rich parasitical class.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago

I agree - in my comment I may have lacked proper emphasis but i was talking about underfunded social security specifically. Social security is absolutely achievable but it does cost more than people would prefer to spend.

[–] eran_morad 26 points 1 day ago

Man, it’d be rad if we stopped fucking up the planet.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 day ago

Yeah, good luck on that.

Unless the country manages to keep the population empoverished, ignorant and culturally isolated, as living standards improve, birth rates drop.

[–] werefreeatlast 4 points 1 day ago

Children powered economic system? Old people homes?.... Hmmm I like old people homes, but where do they get so many old people to build the homes with? You guessed it! High birthrates! Need a house? Just stack a bunch of old people on top of each other... Not talk to the hand! Talk to the wall!

[–] Ksin 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Here is India's population pyramid.

There is a clear swell in the population aged around 20 years old which will be fantastic for the country in the next few decades as they will have a surplus of people in the most productive years of their lives, growing the economy massively. However, right after this glut of workers there is a rather sharp decline in population which means that once these boom time people start retiring, and therefore no longer producing economic output, they will then have to be supported by the suddenly much less numerous younger generation. Meaning there will be more people living off of the work of fewer, that won't be comfortable.

That's why they want more babies, to lessen the blow of an aging population.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It's no different than the pyramid for most countries around the world.

[–] Ksin 4 points 1 day ago

Indeed this is a problem that basically all rapidly developing countries have/will/are facing. Japan is famously struggling with their aging demographic right now, China is coming in 10-20 years, Russia is gonna have a particularly nasty time in about 30 years, Italy quite a bad one in just a decade. Plenty of emerging economies like Egypt, Philippines, and Rwanda are likely having their booms right now. At the same time many western countries have benefited greatly from immigration smoothing out their age demographic brackets since immigrants tend younger.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 day ago

Because no one ever burns heterosexuals at the stake for expressing THEIR sexuality, is why 💅