Political demography, the future of democracy

Why in the News

Census 2027 operations are under way in India, and delimitation of Lok Sabha constituencies is to follow the first Census after 2026. Political and religious leaders across parties and across countries are separately urging their own communities to have more children.

Who is making the pronatalist call, and what are they asking for?

1. A technology entrepreneur frames it as civilisational: Elon Musk describes falling birth rates as a major threat to civilisation, particularly western civilisation.
2. The Andhra Pradesh appeal is addressed to Telugu families: The president of the Telugu Desam Party, who is also Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, has urged Telugu families to have more children.
3. The Tamil appeal was made rhetorically: The president of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and former Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu invoked the idea of having “16 children” for Tamils.
4. The Sangh call names a number: The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief has explicitly called for Indian, and specifically Hindu, families to have three children.
5. A religious institution makes the same ask: The Catholic Church asks its members to have bigger families.
6. Tamil Nadu has converted rhetoric into an entitlement: The State government has extended one year maternity leave to women government employees who have a third child.
7. A demographic remark drew censure from within: A Trinamool Congress Minister in West Bengal remarked in 2024 that Muslims could soon become a majority in the State, and the party distanced itself from the comment and condemned it.

Why is political demography a thin field of study?

1. The field treats population change as a political variable: Political demography studies how births, deaths, ageing and migration affect government policies, political power and international security.
2. Two opposite pressures suppress the scholarship: Conspiracy theorists seeking political capital and demographic sceptics who read any discussion as nativism both crowd out serious work.
3. It is marginal within both parent disciplines: The subject sits at the edge of political science and of demography rather than at the centre of either.
4. Federal structure raises the stakes: In countries such as the United States and India, federalism interacts with demography and the economy at the same time.

What does India’s fertility data actually show?

1. The total fertility rate has fallen to 2.0: India is below replacement level at 2.0 children per woman according to the National Family Health Survey (NFHS)-5.
2. Every major religious community has seen decline: Fertility fell across all of them, and the gap between communities is narrowing.
3. Muslim fertility nearly halved in three decades: Pew Research using NFHS data found it fell from 4.4 children per woman in 1992 to 2.4 in 2019-21.
4. The pace of decline is uneven: Regions and communities moved through the transition at different speeds even as the endpoint converged.

Why is ageing, not fertility, the variable that separates States?

1. Kerala is the oldest State: Its median age is estimated at 37 years in 2026 and projected to reach 47 years by 2051.
2. Uttar Pradesh is among the youngest: Its median age is approximately 26.9 years.
3. The national figure sits between the two: India’s projected median age is about 29.2 years in 2026.
4. The gap will not close within a decade: Uttar Pradesh is projected to reach a median age of only 31.7 years even by 2036.
5. Early success brings early ageing: Southern States achieved fertility decline earlier and face the possibility of ageing faster than States with younger populations.

What does the international record show about reversing fertility decline?

1. No country has reversed a sustained decline: Japan, South Korea, China and Italy introduced financial incentives, childcare support and parental leave, and none restored fertility to the levels seen in earlier decades.
2. South Korea shows the limit of policy generosity: It continues to record extraordinarily low fertility despite extensive family policies.
3. Italy repeats the result in Europe: Births have continued to decline there despite financial incentives and family support measures.
4. Money is not the binding constraint: Fertility is tied to housing, employment, education, gender relations, the cost of raising children and people’s expectations about the future.

How does the movement of people complicate representation?

1. Internal migration is on a very large scale: The 2011 Census recorded about 45 crore internal migrants in India.
2. Emigration is steady at the top end: Around two lakh Indians have given up Indian citizenship on average each year in recent years.
3. The poor move for opportunity: Movement runs from places with fewer opportunities to places with greater opportunities, and the rich move for their own reasons.
4. Vote value is not applied blindly: The principle of one person, one vote, one value operates in consonance with group rights of representation, so social federalism and political federalism are both part of India’s democratic design.

What do demographic differences do to planning and politics?

1. Larger groups will claim greater power: Groups whose numbers rise will press for a bigger share of political authority.
2. Shrinking groups will feel insecure: A group losing share experiences that change as a threat to its standing.
3. Care of the old becomes a fiscal claim: As the number of older and retired people grows relative to the working age population, their care requires a higher commitment of national resources.
4. Movement of people and resources creates friction between States: Both flow from regions where there is more to regions where there is less.
5. The disputes surface as fiscal and electoral questions: Regional demographic differences generate disputes over taxation, fiscal transfers, development and political representation.

Why is the problem not that groups exist?

1. Recognition of group identity is integral to democracy: Democratic practice already accommodates group identity rather than treating it as alien to itself.
2. The political question is not who has more people: It is who has invested in development, who has fewer young people entering the workforce, who needs resources, and how representation should respond to those differences.
3. The risk is permanence, not difference: Demographic difference becomes a democratic problem only when institutions convert it into permanent political antagonism.

Challenges to pronatalism as a response to fertility decline

1. Incentives do not reach the decision they target: Cash transfers and leave entitlements address the cost of a birth rather than the conditions that make raising a child feasible. Eg. Hungary exempted mothers of four children from personal income tax for life, and its fertility rate has stayed below replacement level.
   The Fix: Move spending from birth linked bonuses to childcare places, housing supply and secure employment, which are what the decision actually turns on.
2. Pronatalist rhetoric attaches fertility to group identity: A call addressed to one’s own community converts a household decision into a demographic contest between communities. Eg. Replacement theory has moved from fringe forums into mainstream electoral campaigning in Europe and the United States.
   The Fix: Publish community wise fertility trends from official surveys at fixed intervals, so contested claims are settled against data rather than assertion.
3. A higher birth rate cannot fix an ageing ratio in time: A child born today enters the workforce two decades later, and the care burden of an ageing population is immediate. Eg. Japan’s working age population began shrinking in the 1990s, and three decades of family policy have not altered its dependency trajectory.
   The Fix: Build long term care financing and raise participation by women and older workers, which change the ratio within the same decade.
4. The cost of pronatalism falls on women: Higher birth targets translate into unpaid care time that reduces women’s participation in paid work. Eg. Domestic duties are recorded as the main reason women in India remain outside the labour force.
   The Fix: Tie any natalist entitlement to matched investment in creches, safe transport and paid paternity leave, so the time cost is shared.
5. Population based seat allocation penalises the State that succeeded: A State that reduced fertility earlier ends with a smaller share of seats under any strictly population based formula. Eg. Tamil Nadu’s share of Lok Sabha seats would fall relative to its 1971 based share if seats were reallocated purely on current population.
   The Fix: Weight seat allocation with development and demographic performance indicators alongside population, rather than on population alone.

Conclusion

Demographic change in India is real, uneven and slow to reverse, and no political appeal has altered that pattern anywhere it has been tried. The democratic problem it creates is not that groups exist. It is how seats and money are divided between them at the moment the next redistribution falls due. What must change is that the formula be agreed before the population count is in hand, since every State’s position hardens the day its own number becomes public.

Current Status of Delimitation in India

1. Seat allocation is frozen on the 1971 Census: The 42nd Amendment, 1976 froze the allocation of Lok Sabha seats among States on 1971 population figures until 2000.
2. The freeze was extended to the first Census after 2026: The 84th Amendment, 2001 carried it forward, which is why the next Census is the trigger for the exercise.
3. Four Delimitation Commissions have been constituted: They were set up in 1952, 1963, 1973 and 2002.
4. The 2002 exercise changed boundaries, not State shares: Constituency boundaries within States were readjusted while each State’s total number of seats stayed at its 1971 based level.

Constitutional Framework Governing Delimitation

1. Article 81: Fixes the composition of the Lok Sabha and the principle that seats are allotted to States in proportion to population.
2. Article 82: Requires Parliament to enact a Delimitation Act after every Census for readjustment of Lok Sabha seats.
3. Article 170: Provides for readjustment of seats in State Legislative Assemblies after every Census.
4. Article 327: Empowers Parliament to make provisions on all matters relating to elections, including delimitation.
5. Article 329: Bars courts from interfering in electoral matters, including a delimitation order, except through an election petition.

Major debates surrounding delimitation

1. The value of a vote is unequal across States: A member from a populous State represents several times the electorate of a member from a small one, and correcting that is the case for revision.
2. Federal balance sits against numerical parity: A revision keyed to current population moves weight towards States with slower fertility decline, which raises the question of what weight the Council of States should carry to offset it.
3. The size of the House is contested: A substantially larger Lok Sabha raises questions about the quality of deliberation and the recurring cost of the institution.
4. The women’s quota is linked to the exercise: The Constitution (One Hundred and Sixth Amendment) Act, 2023 makes the 33 per cent reservation for women in the Lok Sabha and State Assemblies operative only after the next Census and delimitation.
5. Boundary drawing is itself disputed: Redrawing constituencies invites gerrymandering allegations, and in the Northeast it runs into ethnic tension over tribal and non-tribal representation.

[2024] How many Delimitation Commissions have been constituted by the Government of India till December 2023?

(a) One

(b) Two

(c) Three

(d) Four