Don’t Kid Yourselves

Why Indians won’t have more babies just because Bhagwat & other notables want them to 

At various points over the past decade, headline makers have urged Hindus to have ten, eight, five, and four, children per couple. RSS chief’s recent exhortation to all Indians – not just Hindus – to have three kids, is the most realistic, but it won’t happen for the same reasons that it hasn’t in Japan, S Korea, Italy, Poland, France and China. Pope Francis passed away after warning, “The Old Continent is becoming an elderly continent…have children, lots of them.” In US, Vance said, “I want more babies”, and a baby Vance is on the way, but it won’t lift the national average despite uncle Musk’s cheerleading: “immediate increase in the birth rate is needed”.

Babies are lovely, no doubt, but they have a nasty trick of growing up. Then you need to school them, and educational inflation in India averages 11-12% pa, while mom and pop’s wage growth doesn’t. One child can prematurely grey your hair, two can mean financial ruin, who wants three? You also need to put a roof over their heads, but house prices have been growing at 9% in the top 10 cities, and 24% in Delhi, where everybody wants to be. Heaven forbid, someone in the family falls ill, and the reality of 10-12% medical inflation hits like a sucker punch. So, from a couple’s POV, babies are a luxury. Each one can cost more than a premium German car, long-term, and may not have a job eventually in an AI world. Separately, consider the mother’s POV. Each baby is a hurdle for her self-realisation because she alone bears the physical and career costs of childbearing. Caring responsibilities can be split, but are they?

So, population collapse looks inevitable everywhere. Five years ago, India’s average fertility rate had already slipped below the level required to keep the population stable. By now, the five states that were growing fast then – including Bihar and UP – may have also slowed. So we, like China, will face all the problems of a greying economy one day. But asking young couples to ward off this scenario by having more kids is like expecting workers to buy fuel for the factory furnace. Not fair. Won’t happen.

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