India’s fertility rate is declining. The National Family Health Survey findings have proved that the country’s total fertility rate has dipped below the replacement level. There is also reliable evidence that suggests that the southern states have done better in checking their populations than the northern ones. Tamil Nadu has a fertility rate of 1.76; the figure for Andhra Pradesh is 1.68. Why, then, are the chief ministers of these two states urging their populaces to have more children? Andhra Pradesh’s N. Chandrababu Naidu may have made the remark keeping in mind the state’s greying population. But the comment made by his counterpart from Tamil Nadu, M.K. Stalin, reveals a broader anxiety with a problematic aspect of the impending delimitation exercise.

Delimitation involves the affixation of the number of seats and boundaries of territorial constituencies in each state for parliamentary and assembly seats. The changes in the number of seats and the creation of new constituencies are contingent upon changes in the size of population. The exercise had been frozen after the 1971 census, through the 42nd Amendment Act till the year, 2000, and was extended by the 84th Amendment Act till 2026, to ensure that population control measures bear fruit so as to prevent states with higher populations from cornering a larger number of seats. The problem though is that the success of population control has been uneven in India, with the southern states doing much better than those in the north. This effectively means that the south — along with India’s smaller states — by virtue of having lower population growth, may end up with lesser political representation once the new delimitation process is completed. Any state having to suffer in terms of political representation on account of achieving success in population control would be a travesty of justice. The solution, however, cannot be a call by political leaders to the people to procreate with abandon. Such a measure is absurd, even dangerous. What is required is a patient, representative discussion by all stakeholders to find a way around this discriminatory feature of delimitation. The failure to do so could worsen ties among the republic’s regions. This, in turn, would put further strain on an already enfeebled federal edifice.