New Delhi, Sept. 16 -- The Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister (EAC-PM) has recommended withdrawing sterilisation-linked incentive payments and other population-control measures, citing India's declining fertility rate and changing demographic profile.

In its working paper, titled The Ghost of Population Past: How Population Control Persists in India, the EAC-PM said India's total fertility rate (TFR) has fallen to 1.9, below the replacement level. Excluding Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, the TFR is 1.6, comparable with Northern Europe at 1.5 and the United States at 1.6.

The council called for an end to direct benefit transfers linked to sterilisation, including acceptor payments, wage-loss compensation and enhanced incentives for acceptors and service providers. It said there was "no economic rationale" for continuing such payments in states where fertility is already below replacement levels.

The paper also recommended ending motivational incentives linked to terminal family-planning methods, as well as ASHA incentives associated with limiting couples to two children. It called for the withdrawal of family-planning awards, World Population Day celebrations and Vasectomy Fortnight observances that promote population control.

The EAC-PM further proposed repealing two-child norm-based disqualifications across states and changing the scope of Mission Parivar Vikas to reflect the demographic situation in states at or below replacement fertility.

"Remove all fertility reduction, population control or 'stabilisation' language from our national and state policy frameworks and outputs," the paper said. The council noted that several states have remained below replacement fertility for more than two decades. These include Andhra Pradesh at 1.4, Telangana and Karnataka at 1.5 each, Kerala and Tamil Nadu at 1.3 each, West Bengal at 1.3, Punjab at 1.4, Goa at 1.6, Himachal Pradesh at 1.5, Sikkim at 1.0, Maharashtra at 1.4 and Delhi at 1.2.

India's annual births have also declined from about 29.3 million in 2001 to around 23.2 million in 2023, a fall of roughly one-fifth. The 2023 figure is similar to the number recorded about 50 years ago, in 1974.

Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.