EAC-PM Paper Calls for Abandoning Population Control as an Objective of State Policy

The news

The Economic Times reported that India should abandon population control as an objective of state policy and realign its family planning framework with the country's changing demographic reality, said Sanjeev Sanyal, member of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister, in a working paper titled 'The Ghost of Population Past', co-authored by Aakansha Arora, director, EAC-PM, and Virat Singh, consultant, EAC-PM. 'The historical experience of other countries shows that once fertility declines below a behavioural tipping point, and alters social norms, it is very difficult to reverse. This is more so given that there is no need to suppress the total fertility rate further and risk falling into a low-fertility trap sooner,' the paper said. It emphasised that the government must avoid disincentivisation linked to transfer payments, including acceptor payments, wage-loss compensations, and enhanced incentives to service providers, related to sterilisations. 'Repeal motivational payments and incentive payments tied to terminal methods and the ASHA incentive related to limiting couples to two children,' it said. It also recommended discontinuing all family-planning related awards, World Population Day celebrations and Vasectomy Fortnight observances that call for population control along with the two-child norm disqualification across all states. According to the paper, the national total fertility rate (TFR) is currently at 1.6, and in the absence of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, the TFR stands at 1.6 — comparable to Northern Europe at 1.5 and the United States at 1.6. The paper also called for removing all fertility regulation, calculated risk, persistence and continuous learning.

Static syllabus linkage

1. Total fertility rate and replacement level. TFR is the average number of children a woman would bear over her lifetime at current age-specific fertility rates. Replacement level fertility — the rate at which a population exactly replaces itself across generations — is about 2.1 in countries with low child mortality. Below that, a population eventually declines in the absence of migration.
2. Momentum explains why numbers still rise below replacement. Even at a TFR below replacement, total population continues to grow for decades because a large share of the population is in reproductive age. This is population momentum, and it is why a falling fertility rate and a rising population are not contradictory — a distinction routinely confused in public debate.
3. India's policy history in brief. The family planning programme was launched in 1952, the first in any developing country. The emergency-era sterilisation drive of 1975-77 discredited coercive approaches for a generation. The National Population Policy, 2000 set replacement-level fertility as a goal and explicitly endorsed a target-free, voluntary approach.
4. What the EAC-PM is. The Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister is a non-constitutional, non-statutory independent body that advises the Prime Minister on economic and related issues. Its working papers are advisory analysis, not government policy — an important distinction when citing one in an answer.
5. The two-child norm and the delimitation link. Several states have disqualified persons with more than two children from contesting local body elections or holding certain posts. Separately, the constitutional freeze on reallocating Lok Sabha seats by population, presently extended to the first census after 2026, means states that reduced fertility fastest fear losing representation when delimitation resumes.

Why UPSC loves this

1. Demographic transition is a standing GS1 theme. Population, ageing, the demographic dividend and internal migration recur across GS1 and GS2. A formal recommendation to reverse the policy direction is precisely the kind of development that makes a stale topic examinable again.
2. It carries a federal and political sting. The two-child norm's repeal, the north-south fertility divergence and the delimitation question connect population policy to representation — one of the most consequential debates approaching in Indian politics.
3. It rewards precision over slogans. Most candidates still write about 'population explosion'. An answer that knows TFR is 1.6, below replacement, and can explain momentum, will read as a decade ahead of the standard script.

Analysis

1. The core claim is about irreversibility, not about numbers. The paper's argument is not merely that TFR is low. It is that once fertility falls below a behavioural tipping point and social norms adjust — smaller households become the default, housing and work are organised around them, childcare becomes expensive and scarce — the decline becomes very hard to reverse. Every country that has tried pro-natalist policy after reaching very low fertility has had limited success at high cost. That is why the paper treats continuing to push fertility down as a policy risk rather than a neutral act.
2. The specific recommendations target incentives, not services. The paper asks for repeal of motivational and incentive payments tied to terminal methods and of the ASHA incentive linked to limiting couples to two children, and for discontinuing family-planning awards, World Population Day observances and Vasectomy Fortnight. None of this restricts contraceptive access. The distinction matters enormously: dismantling a target-and-incentive architecture is not the same as withdrawing reproductive health services, and conflating them would be a serious misreading.
3. Incentivised sterilisation has an ethical problem independent of demography. Paying a provider more for more sterilisations, or paying an acceptor for undergoing one, creates pressure on exactly the people with least bargaining power — poor and less-educated women, who dominate India's sterilisation statistics. Even if India wanted lower fertility, a payment-driven system produces quota behaviour and compromises free and informed consent. So the case for repeal rests on rights grounds as well as demographic ones, and an answer that makes both arguments is stronger than one that makes only the demographic case.
4. The national average conceals the real map. The paper notes that excluding Bihar and Uttar Pradesh leaves the TFR at 1.6 as well. Several southern and western states are well below that, while parts of the north remain higher. This divergence is what makes a single national policy inappropriate: a state at 1.5 and a state at 2.4 need opposite interventions, and a uniform rule optimised for the national average is wrong for both.
5. The two-child disqualification is the sharpest recommendation. Disqualifying persons with more than two children from contesting local elections is the one measure that is coercive in effect, since it attaches a civic penalty to a private decision. It also falls disproportionately on communities with higher fertility, which raises equal-protection questions. Recommending its repeal across all states is therefore not a demographic adjustment but a rights correction — and it is the recommendation most likely to face political resistance.
6. The delimitation shadow explains the politics. The unstated reason the north-south fertility gap is politically explosive is representation. States that reduced fertility fastest fear losing Lok Sabha seats when the freeze on reallocation ends, effectively being penalised for policy success. Until that question is settled, any national conversation about population policy will be read through a federal lens rather than a demographic one.
7. There is a reasonable counter-argument, and it should be stated. India is still adding population in absolute terms, and pressure on land, water, urban infrastructure and employment is real. Someone can coherently argue that abandoning the framework while numbers still grow is premature. The answer to that objection is momentum — the absolute increase is driven by age structure, not by current fertility, and pushing TFR lower cannot change it — but the objection deserves to be answered rather than ignored.

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