India’s population shift and delimitation: Ravi K. Mishra breaks down the North–South divide from a longer historical perspective The prevailing narrative holds that southern states achieved demographic transition earlier and more decisively than their northern counterparts — and face electoral penalty for it in the coming delimitation. Historian Ravi K. Mishra brings a 150-year longitudinal view to Terms of Engagement and argues that this framing flattens a more layered historical record.