Aastha Arora, India’s one-billionth baby, turned 24 on May 11. The world's eight-billionth babies will turn three on November 15. There were two claimants—one born in the Philippines, the other in the Dominican Republic.
All these are guess work. We have no real count of the people breathing at this moment on the Indian earth. A guesstimate is, there are close to 1.5 billion.
That’s the statisticians’ nightmare. It took several millennia for us to number one billion. Now in a quarter century we have added half a billion. We will be two billion in still shorter time.
Our last headcount was in 2011, and the next due in 2021 when Covid came in the way. Covid has since gone; we celebrated three more Diwalis, Eids, Guru Purnimas, Christmases and a G-20 summit, held a general election and several assembly rounds but are yet to hold the headcount. Now the home office tells us—stand up, and be counted next year.
That will be a Malthusian nightmare. The way things are going, headcount 2025 could be nastier and noisier than even the 1961 round. That was when the Akalis, seeking a separate Punjab, asked their people to respond to census queries in Punjabi, while the Arya Samajis and the Jan Sanghis asked all and sundry on the Indus plains to speak in Hindi.
Language is no longer an emotive issue except occasionally when some of our Delhi rulers forget that Hindi is not ‘the’ national language but only an official language of the Union along with English. Last week Union Minister Ravneet Singh wrote to Rajya Sabha member John Brittas in Hindi and received a reply in Malayalam. Brittas was taking a page from the book of his departed comrade E.K. Nayanar. As CM of Kerala in 1990, Nayanar received a letter in Hindi from his UP counterpart Mulayam Singh Yadav. He replied in Malayalam.
The north-south rift these days is less over the tongue, and more over the heads. The head-count, rather.
It has been the endeavour of all those who ruled or led India since the days of Sanjay Gandhi that we should make fewer babies. Sanjay used the surgeon’s scalpel to spread his message; others have been gently urging and nudging. Now two southern rulers are saying—enough of this! North, you have been cheating!
Many political economists have been dreading this moment—when the population issue would become a political hot potato.
What is the population issue? Simple. Couples in the south had been listening to the urges and nudges of family welfarists and making fewer babies, whereas northern couples were carrying on regardless.
Now, Andhra’s Chandrababu Naidu and Tamil Nadu’s M.K. Stalin fear that there will soon be fewer boys and girls in their schools, fewer hands in their farms and factories, and fewer whiz-kids in their cyber labs. Kerala is already on its way towards becoming a land of aged couples who made few babies when they could. Most of those few kids, now into their youth, have left seeking better colleges and jobs elsewhere. To avoid Kerala’s fate, Naidu and Stalin want their people to make more babies.
Their fears are two-fold. One, they see the northern states cornering more of the development funds citing they have more people to care for. Two, next year’s headcount will be followed by a long-frozen delimitation of Lok Sabha constituencies in 2026. With more people to be represented, northern states will gain several more seats and the south none or few. North will dominate governance.
India’s rulers assure things will be fair. But how? No one has a suggestion, let alone an answer.
prasannan@theweek.in