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.
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.
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.