The Pulse | Society | South Asia

The Real Crisis in Andhra Pradesh is Development, Not Demography

When the Andhra government cannot sustain existing welfare systems, why is it promising financial incentives to couples to have three or four children?

Chandrababu Naidu, the chief minister of the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, has announced that his coalition government will provide parents $312 for the birth of a third child and $416 for a fourth child under the state’s proposed population management policy.

The policy marks a decisive shift from the language of family planning to what the government now calls “population care.”

The anxiety underlying the move is not entirely without basis. Andhra Pradesh’s fertility rate has fallen, with the National Family Health Survey (NFHS)-5, which covers the 2019-2021 period, estimating the state’s total fertility rate at 1.7 children per woman, below replacement level.

However, demographic concern by itself cannot justify a policy whose social and economic consequences may ultimately deepen the very crisis it claims to address.

Andhra Pradesh’s own Socio-Economic Survey 2024-25 notes that decadal population growth had already slowed to 9.21 percent during 2001-11, significantly below the national average of 17.70 percent. Population density in the state has consistently remained lower than the all-India average. However, the real question is not whether Andhra Pradesh has “too few people,” but whether it has been able to provide education, healthcare, employment, social security and dignity to the people who already live there.

The origins of Andhra Pradesh’s present demographic concerns lie in the success of its earlier population policies. The undivided state was the first in India to formulate a State Population Policy in 1997, three years before the National Population Policy of 2000. During the 1990s and early 2000s, successive governments, including Naidu’s earlier administration, promoted small-family norms as an integral part of the state’s development strategy. The policy linked fertility reduction with improvements in health, education and economic well-being, while an extensive family-planning program — centered largely on sterilization, especially female sterilization — expanded rapidly across the state.

At its peak, Andhra Pradesh was conducting nearly 800,000 sterilization operations annually, among the highest numbers in the country. Contraceptive use rose significantly, and the state became one of the first major Indian states to approach replacement-level fertility despite having more modest social indicators than states such as Kerala and Tamil Nadu.

The campaign proved sufficiently effective to shape reproductive aspirations themselves. In 1992-93, 64.8 percent of women with two children reported that they did not want any more children. This rose to 83.7 percent by NFHS-2 (1998-99) and to 91.5 percent by NFHS-3 (2005-06), reflecting a deep social acceptance of smaller families. The small-family norm was further reinforced through measures such as the 1994 two-child eligibility requirement for contesting local body elections. Today’s concern with below-replacement fertility is therefore not an abrupt departure from the past but, in part, a consequence of the demographic transition that earlier policies helped to accelerate.

The current debate reflects a new challenge: how to respond to slowing population growth while preserving gains in health, education and social development?

The question becomes sharper in light of Andhra Pradesh’s economic distress. The unemployment rate for persons aged 15 and above stood at 8.2 percent in July-September 2025, well above the national average of 5.2 percent. Rural unemployment (8.5 percent) exceeded urban unemployment (7.7 percent), reflecting agrarian distress and weak non-farm job growth. Women face an even harsher reality: rural female unemployment was 10.5 percent versus 7.3 percent for men, while urban female unemployment was 9.3 percent against 7 percent for males. Overall female unemployment reached 10.1 percent, nearly double the national female average.

Andhra Pradesh’s policy asks economically insecure households to bear costs the state has failed to address through development, transferring the burden of demographic anxiety onto households least capable of carrying it. A one-time payment of $312 or $416 cannot support the lifelong cost of raising a child. NSSO data show that antenatal, delivery and post-natal care costs average $665 in an urban private hospital and nearly $187 in a rural government hospital. One-third of rural........

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