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New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government are really very worried about India’s population – or so they have led us to believe.

On Independence Day in 2019, he said, “We need to worry about population explosion” and need “schemes to control it”. Then next year, in 2020, he said, “population control is a form of patriotism”. He went on to commend small families on their patriotism.

Just before the general elections in 2024, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman said “that rising population growth and demographic changes pose challenges to the goals of ‘Viksit Bharat’”, as she presented the Interim Budget 2024-25 on February 1, 2024.

Sitharaman proposed that “a high power committee will be formed for extensive consideration of the challenges arising from fast population growth and........

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