Progress but

Progress but

Even as fertility rates fall there is less place for the girl child in the smaller Indian family.

After decades of worrying about high population growth rates, India is on the cusp of a demographic transition. Its total fertility rate – the number of children likely to be born to a woman – was 2.2 in 2017 which is close to the replacement level TFR of 2.1 – indicating that population will stabilise in the near future. Alongside, the younger demographic will slowly decline as a proportion of the total population, and the working age populace will peak around 2041.

The low TFRs in the 1.6-1.7 range in Maharashtra, Bengal, Punjab and southern states, even as Bihar and Uttar Pradesh lag behind with a 3.0-3.2 TFR, will produce equally significant demographic shifts. As the relatively developed south ages, it could induce mass migration from Hindi speaking states – provided the applecart is not upset needlessly by latent sub-nationalist tendencies or ham-handed efforts to promote Hindi. Nevertheless, the pan-India rise in elderly population will require greater investment in healthcare, old age homes and social security schemes.

Having received sufficient advance warning of these shifts, India must prepare for an orderly transition. Unfortunately, falling TFRs are just one side of the demographic evolution. While these indicate that women are gaining greater agency in planning childbirth, sex ratio at birth (SRB) – number of female babies born for every 1,000 male babies – has fallen to a record low of 896 in 2015-17, translating to a devastating 11.7 million missing girl children. Preference for male children appears to be combining with the pressure to have small families due to rising household expenditure to create a deadly cocktail for the girl child.

This finds correlation in 2017-18 Economic Survey which notes that India’s sex ratio of last child (SRLC) in the case of first-born children is 1.82:1, heavily skewed in favour of boys compared with the ideal sex ratio of 1.05:1. Even top dog Kerala saw its SRB of 974 in 2012-14 plummet to 948 in 2015-17. Evidently, government has its work cut out in streamlining the Beti Bachao Beti Padhao scheme. Effective community mobilisation, financial incentives for girl children, gender sensitisation campaigns, and tackling widespread misogyny in society are needed. Declining sex ratio also manifests as rising crimes against women and human trafficking. This trend must be speedily reversed, if India is to derive maximum advantage from its demographic transition.