Is Bhagwat trying to counter southern leaders who have asked for more kids because they have caused a certain hump in the development journey?
Published Sep 08, 2025 | 9:00 AM ⚊ Updated Sep 08, 2025 | 9:00 AM
Mohan Bhagwat.
Synopsis: RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat recently said that he was in favour of Indian parents having three children. However, what Bhagwat said is somewhat naïve at best, and manipulative at worst, if you look at the context in which he has been making his statements.
Those of us who grew up watching family planning campaigns or advertisements that urged Indians to keep family sizes small and contain what they called a “population explosion” are suddenly feeling strange. First came the talk of a “demographic dividend,” which represented the positive effects of growth in the working-age population, and now it seems that we are back to square one.
There have been calls to have larger families, which, on closer look, are quite misplaced.
It is time for us to tell people like Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat: “Stop kidding us – or yourself.” This is because simplistic assumptions about having more children are no longer valid – especially if one believes in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s call to make India “Viksit Bharat” (Developed India) by 2047.
Bhagwat caused people to raise eyebrows recently when he said, during a press conference to mark 100 years of his Hindu nationalist organisation, the RSS, that he was in favour of Indian parents having three children.
He said India’s population needs to be stabilised and a decline arrested because the country’s current fertility rate was 2.1, which is to say that we are fast reaching a point where the rate of births equals that of deaths.
He was referring to TFR, the Total Fertility Rate, which is a demographic indicator of the average number of children a woman can have based on age-based reproduction criteria. A TFR of 2.1 is considered “replacement level” fertility, where the population stabilises.
In fact, after Bhagwat’s statement, India’s TFR last week was reported to have fallen further to 1.9 in 2023, down from 2.0 in 2022, according to the latest Sample Registration Survey Statistical Report.
However, what Bhagwat said is somewhat naïve at best, and manipulative at worst, if you look at the context in which he has been making his statements.
There is a lot in the past of RSS, as well as current global developments, that suggest that simple arithmetic may not be the best way to improve the lot of a society.
“Marrying at the right age and having three children ensures that both the parents and children are healthy,” Bhagwat said, echoing a simplistic belief that life is necessarily about raising a family and kids.
India’s population in 1951, soon after Independence from British rule, was 36 crore. The current population, estimated at 145 crore, is four times that number. Population stability at the current level assumes that the current population is hale, hearty and fine.
Here’s where Bhagwat falters. Having a developed population means that India needs to have citizens that show positive indicators in everything from health, life expectancy and literacy to incomes and overall well-being.
Ensuring all this to a population that is four times that of the country’s headcount in 1947 should be the focus, not a simplistic approach that talks of the number of people.
The population of the United States has grown to the current 34 crore, which is the level at which India was circa 1947, from about 15 crore in 1950. India has to first take care of the demographic equivalent that is four times that of the current US, even as Americans fret about jobs, inflation, healthcare and immigration. Think about it!
Bhagwat, one suspects, is living in the past, when developments based on technology, quality of life or standard of living meant little or nothing. RSS supporters frequently talk of foreign invaders like the Mughals and/or the threat of religious conversions or Hindus being overwhelmed by population growth among Muslims. That era is past.
We now live in an age of renewable energy, biotechnology, space travel, satellite communications, and artificial intelligence, which threaten old jobs while creating new ones. It would be logical, therefore, to focus on the quality of a country’s population, not its number.
India’s Human Development Index (HDI) rank in the UN’s Human Development Report for 2025 is 130 out of 193 countries, an improvement from the 133rd position in 2022. But clearly, there is a long way to go for Bharat to be Viksit.
Bhagwat’s statement may be cynically interpreted as one that is politically loaded to favour northern states. Northern states, which have a population growth way above the national average, appear headed for a higher number of seats in the national parliament based on the population criterion, which has caused discomfort south of the Vindhyas.
Is Bhagwat trying to counter southern leaders who have asked for more kids because they have caused a certain hump in the development journey?
In a statement seen more indicative of sarcasm than seriousness, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin said at a wedding function earlier this year that Tamilians should have had children earlier in their marriage, as only that would give Tamil Nadu more seats in an expected delimitation exercise to allocate seats to the Lok Sabha based on population.
Similarly, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Nara Chandrababu Naidu said last year that his government was planning to bring a law that would allow only people with two or more children to contest elections to local bodies like panchayats.
Bhagwat, whose influence is almost exclusively in the northern states, cannot sound like a Stalin or Naidu. All of India needs to focus on positive migration and human development indicators, using progressive policies and useful technologies. Also, in an age where women are joining the workforce to correct age-old gender disparities, parenting is a huge responsibility, not to be thrust on all without preparation.
A reasonably reliable Wikipedia page on fertility data for 2020, citing the National Family Health Survey, shows Bihar lagging all other states with a TFR of 3.0, closely followed by Meghalaya, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, and Manipur.
All these states reported a TFR above the replacement level of 2.1. I am surprised by Meghalaya and Manipur at the bottom of the TFR table, even as its northeastern cousin Sikkim tops the table with a TFR of 1.05. That aside, it is clear that Hindi states need to focus on their human development issues rather than the headcount.
Naidu and Stalin are wording their statements carefully, while Bhagwat sounds like an unwanted blast from the past. He is the one who should weigh his words carefully.
(Views are personal. Edited by Muhammed Fazil.)
