Visakhapatnam: On the occasion of International Women’s Day, Telugu Desam Party (TDP) MP Kalisetti Appalanaidu announced that “if a woman gives birth to a third child who is a girl, Rs 50,000 will be paid to her from my salary, and if that child is a boy, a cow will be handed over to her.”
This announcement comes in the backdrop of his party leader and Andhra Pradesh chief minister N. Chandrababu Naidu’s repeated exhortations since October last year to women in the state to have more children. And this trend is not limited to Andhra Pradesh. Across the Southern states, a chorus of political voices is rising, underlining concerns and proposing, with varying degrees of subtlety, “solutions,” related to declining fertility rates.
On the very same day as the Vizianagaram MP’s announcement, Naidu, speaking at an event in Markapuram in Prakasam district, announced that female employees will be granted maternity leave for all child deliveries, regardless of the number of children.
Earlier in January this year, Naidu said that “an individual can become a sarpanch, municipal councilor, or a mayor, only if he or she has more than two children.” These comments came just two months after his government passed the Andhra Pradesh Panchayat Raj (Amendment) Bill, 2024, and the Andhra Pradesh Municipal Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2024. These laws repealed the contrasting condition which previously mandated that anyone with more than two children would be disqualified from contesting elections.
Last week, Tamil Nadu chief minister and Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) president M.K. Stalin, addressing a gathering at the wedding of a DMK district secretary in Nagapattinam, said, “Earlier, we used to say, ‘Take your time and have a baby.’ But now the situation has changed, and we should say it now.”
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He addressed the newlywed couple at the event, urging them to plan their family without delay. “Now I would not say ‘don’t hurry.’ There is a situation that only if we have a large population can we have more MPs. This situation has emerged because we succeeded in effective population control. Get children immediately, but give them beautiful Tamil names,” he added.
Stalin’s call for more children, with an emphasis on Tamil names, reflects a concern that extends beyond mere numbers, touching upon cultural preservation in the face of perceived threats to Tamil identity.
Earlier in October, he had quipped, “Why should we restrict ourselves to having fewer children? Why shouldn’t we aim for 16 children (alluding to an old Tamil adage)?”
While both Congress chief ministers – Telangana’s A. Revanth Reddy and Karnataka’s Siddaramaiah – stopped short of pronatalist prescriptions, both have been vocal about how South Indian states could potentially find themselves penalised unfairly for maintaining low fertility rates. Or as Reddy put it, “The central government came up with ‘hum do, hamare do (us two, our two)’ for families nationally. The south implemented it, and now they want to punish us for it.”
Whatever might be the prescription, the relatively declining population in Southern India, due to consistent levels of low Total Fertility Rate (TFR), has unleashed anxieties. How these anxieties are articulated, however, depends on each party’s political alignment. Parties opposing the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) frame the issue as a political one.
For instance, Telangana deputy chief minister Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka, termed the impending delimitation a “looming political threat.” Even the Yuvajana Sramika Rythu Congress Party (YSRCP), outside any national alliance, has expressed political concern that “Southern states might not gain seats proportionally to Northern states.”
In contrast, Naidu, a key NDA ally, speaking to the media in Delhi, dismissed the idea of delimitation as something unrelated to population management. “Don’t link all issues at a time,” he stated, adding that he was talking about “national interest.” His son, state cabinet minister N. Lokesh, added some context to interpret this “national interest,” asserting that Andhra Pradesh would not be drawn into political debates driven by electoral considerations in other states: “Just because some states have elections and they’re making it an election issue, I don’t believe that Andhra Pradesh has to jump onto the bandwagon.”
Stalin even called an all-party meeting (of parties registered in Tamil Nadu) on March 5 to discuss delimitation, with the aim of drafting a ‘joint response.’ The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its ally, the Tamil Maanila Congress, have both decided not to attend the meeting.
This seemingly pragmatic stance of Naidu, however, reveals a deeper ideological alignment. Clearly for Naidu and his son, their anxieties are merely economic, presented as being certainly looming enough for their MP to offer such financial incentives, and for their government to bring in laws encouraging women to have more than three children – and not a threat to political power as such. This aspect of threat came into sharper focus recently in the context of the debate over the implementation of the three-language policy and, more specifically, Tamil Nadu chief minister Stalin accusing the Centre of “open blackmail” by withholding funds from the state for refusing to accept the National Education Policy (NEP).
Naidu’s invocation of “national interest” reveals more than mere alliance politics. It signifies a fundamental ideological convergence with the NDA. Known for his “discreet charm” and his fluency in the World Bank-IMF verbiage of development, technology, and good governance, Naidu is a past master at replacing political judgment with economic evaluation. This is, in the words of scholar William Davies, the “disenchantment of politics by economics.”
It is one thing to parrot one’s alliance partner’s positions, but it is another to articulate the population issue as merely an economic and technical concern, devoid of politics. For, political judgement involves debate, deliberation, ethical considerations, conflicting values, and the articulation of different visions of the “common good”.
As both father and son put it, their anxieties are beyond these inherently messy and subjective politics; they are about a ‘neutral and objective’ category called ‘national interest’. By stressing on seemingly objective quantifications and pre-interpretive standard of value, what Davies’ calls ‘facts’, like ‘dependency ratios’ and effect of an ageing population on GDP growth, Naidu and Lokesh essentially articulated Dharmendra Pradhan’s accusation of Stalin ‘obviously playing politics,’ without saying as much.
This depoliticised framework leaves no room for the articulation of rights, of any kind, be they social or regional. Demands for rights become unnecessary impediments to national interests. The emphasis shifts from demands to sacrifices in the name of “national interest.” This is exemplified by Naidu’s preference for a “skill census” over a caste census – an approach that prioritises measurable skills relevant to the job market (outcomes) while sidelining discussions of equal opportunity, power relations, identity, and historical injustice.
Ultimately, while anxieties about declining fertility rates and their potential consequences resonate across South India, Naidu’s response stands apart. Unlike the explicitly political concerns voiced by leaders like Stalin, Reddy, and even the YSRCP, Naidu’s framing, couched in the language of “national interest” and economic pragmatism, effectively depoliticises the issue. This isn’t simply a matter of political expediency dictated by his alliance with the NDA; it reflects a deeper ideological convergence.
Naidu’s preference for technical solutions, his emphasis on economic metrics over concerns of social justice, and his willingness to downplay the political ramifications of delimitation, all indicate a worldview fundamentally aligned with the NDA’s broader emphasis on a centralised, economically-driven vision of national progress. Within this vision, regional concerns and demands for equitable representation are – for as long as the TDP is in the NDA – subordinated to a singular, ostensibly objective, “national interest.” Once the alliance breaks, the neutral “national interest” will be easily replaced with a politically charged, value-laden “regional interest,” and “Telugu pride and self-respect,” to borrow TDP founder Nandamuri Taraka Ramarao’s (NTR’s) words.
