Political demography, the future of democracy

What is common between Elon Musk, M.K. Stalin, a Catholic bishop in Keralam, N. Chandrababu Naidu, C. Joseph Vijay and Mohan Bhagwat? All of them are asking ‘their’ people to have more children.The political consequences of changing patterns of birth, death and the movement of people are being felt the world over. The ongoing Census 2027 operations in India have brought a sense of urgency to this question of uneven population trends across regions and communities. The impending question of delimitation of Lok Sabha constituencies, which is to follow the first Census after 2026, adds another layer of urgency.Natalism, or pronatalism, is a belief system or policy stance that encourages human reproduction and high birth rates, and there are vocal advocates of this these days in communities around the world. Elections and political debates increasingly involve questions of fertility, migration, ageing, identity and belonging. Mr. Musk speaks of falling birth rates as a major threat to civilisation, particularly western. In India, Mr. Naidu, president of the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, has urged Telugu families to have more children. Mr. Stalin, president of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister, invoked the idea of having “16 children”, rhetorically, for Tamils. Mr. Bhagwat, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief, has explicitly called for Indian, rather Hindu, families to have three children. The Catholic church asks its members to have bigger families. In the most recent development, the Tamil Nadu government, led by Mr. Vijay, Chief Minister and founder and president of the Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK), has extended one-year maternity leave to women government employees having a third child in Tamil Nadu. In 2024, West Bengal and Trinamool Congress (TMC) Minister Firhad Hakim’s remark that Muslims could soon become a majority in the State drew criticism, with the TMC distancing itself from the comment and condemning it.Take the subject seriouslyAll this makes political demography — the study of how population changes, such as births, deaths, ageing, and migration, affect government policies, political power, and international security — more salient. Sadly, while there is abundant politics around demography, true scholarship is being stifled by conspiracy theorists seeking political capital and by demographic sceptics who view any discussion of the subject as nativism or xenophobia.While the global population will continue to grow for some time, that growth is uneven across political boundaries and social groups. India itself is moving rapidly through a fertility transition. India’s total fertility rate has fallen below replacement level, to 2.0 children per woman according to the National Family Health Survey (NFHS)-5. Fertility has declined across every major religious community; though the pace of decline has been uneven across regions and communities, the gap is narrowing. Pew Research, using NFHS data, found that Muslim fertility declined from 4.4 children per woman in 1992 to 2.4 in 2019-21, fertility declined among every major religious group and fertility gaps between religious communities have narrowed.Demographic factors will challenge the existing electoral process. The ‘One person, one vote, one value’ principle in India is not applied blindly, but in consonance with group rights of representation. Social federalism and political federalism are both part of India’s democratic design. Rich and poor people both move, though for different reasons. In recent years, around two lakh Indians have been giving up their Indian citizenship on average, each year. The poor also move — from places with fewer opportunities to places with greater opportunities. According to the 2011 Census, India had about 45 crore internal migrants. Some regions are ageing, while others will remain younger for longer. Keralam has the highest median age in India, estimated at 37 years in 2026, and this is projected to reach 47 years by 2051. The median age in Uttar Pradesh is approximately 26.9 years, making it one of the youngest States in India. India’s projected median age is about 29.2 years in 2026. Even by 2036, the median age of Uttar Pradesh is projected to reach only 31.7 years, according to some estimates.What is in focusNatalism is simplistic rhetoric in response to complex realities. No country or society has easily or consistently reversed a sustained decline in fertility. Countries such as Japan, South Korea, China, and Italy have introduced financial incentives, childcare support, parental leave, and other pronatalist measures, but none has succeeded in restoring fertility to the levels seen in earlier decades. South Korea, despite extensive family policies, continues to have extraordinarily low fertility. Italy, too, has continued to experience declining births despite financial incentives and family-support measures. This suggests that fertility is not simply a question of money. It is tied to housing, employment, education, gender relations, the cost of raising children, and people’s expectations about the future.The reason for continued population growth in many societies is increasingly expanding lifespan and population momentum rather than increasing births. The spread of that growth is uneven across political boundaries and social groups. Similarly, wealth creation and distribution remain uneven and will remain so. Fewer people are being born, people are living longer, moving faster and farther; these factors in combination with demands of democracy and federalism raise challenges that require cool thinking and new imaginative capacity.Studying the interlinkage between politics and demography is a marginal field within political science and demography, but it should not remain so. In many countries, such as the United States and India, the question of federalism is also in play alongside demography and the economy. A balance will have to be achieved both across social groups nationally and across States in terms of development outcomes, growth, opportunities, and political power. India’s southern States, for instance, achieved fertility decline earlier and now face the possibility of ageing faster than States with relatively younger populations.The political question is not simply who has more people, but who has invested in development, who has fewer young people entering the workforce, who needs resources, and how representation should respond to these differences. In a utopian world, if all of humanity were one, no consideration other than individual identity should come into play. But these questions are, for better or worse, framed in terms of group identities. Recognition of group identities is not alien to democratic practice; it can be an integral and essential part of it. The political problem, therefore, is not that groups exist. It is how democratic institutions and development planning can accommodate changing group identities without turning demographic differences into permanent political antagonism.Impact on planning and politicsThe changes in demographic patterns affect both planning and politics. Groups with larger populations will claim greater political power, while groups that are shrinking will feel increasingly insecure. As the number of older and retired people grows relative to the working-age population, their care will require higher commitment of national resources. When these demographic differences vary across regions, they can create friction between States as resources and people move across borders — from regions where there is more to regions where there is less. Regional demographic differences can also cause disputes over taxation, fiscal transfers, development, and political representation.World over, conversations about demographic shifts have become a source of diatribe. While one group talks about replacement theory and fears that its race is being wiped out, another dismisses such concerns as conspiracy theories. Demographic change is neither a conspiracy to replace any community nor an imagined phenomenon. It is real, natural, and likely to be difficult to reverse. Politics needs to shift from trying to profit from demographic change to sensitively managing and navigating it. The question, then, is whether there can be a more expansive idea of “The People.”varghese.g@thehindu.co.in