The Telugu Desam Party (TDP)-led NDA government in Andhra Pradesh will give Rs 25,000 to couples for having a second or third child — a move that comes months after Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu urged people to have more children citing , an ageing population and reduced parliamentary representation for South India.
Naidu told the Legislative Assembly that his population management plan would be a game changer to increase population.
“Currently, about 58% of families have only one child, around 2.17 lakh , and nearly 62 lakh families have three or more children,” he told the Assembly. “Around three lakh families have only one child instead of two, while another three lakh families have more than two children.”
Claiming that Andhra Pradesh’s Total Fertility Rate (TFR) stands at 1.5 against the ideal 2.1 “to maintain demographic balance”, the chief minister said that as economies grow, birth rates tend to decline, which can create workforce shortages and long-term economic challenges.
Calling it a “major policy intervention”, Naidu said: “To address this, the government is proposing financial incentives for childbirth. Under the plan, parents who have a second child or more will receive Rs 25,000 at the time of delivery. Once, population was seen as a major problem and before 2004 we incentivised family planning. We even brought a law disqualifying those with more than two children from contesting local body elections. But today, there’s a need to amend the law to allow those with more than two children to contest. A nation is not just about its land, regions, towns or borders, it is about its people.”
The move comes amid concerns over the state’s ageing population, which has prompted a number of measures.
Last July, Naidu had said his government would launch a policy to encourage couples to have more children. Speaking at the , Naidu said the government would soon introduce a robust population growth policy.
“People are our strength. Population is our strongest economic resource. The world is increasingly reliant on countries with large populations. Earlier, I promoted family planning but now I stress the need for population management. To avoid a human resource crisis in the future, the fertility rate in the state must rise. Joint families are disappearing. There’s growing concern about the declining population in South India. While Parliament seats may increase in the future, southern states could see reduced representation,” he said.
The speech came at a time when the south’s declining population sparked concerns of reduced representation in the next delimitation exercise.
