Should RSS guru Mohan Bhagwat be worried about Indian society’s imminent demise?

A worried RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat on Sunday, 1 December, called upon couples to have more than two children.

It is not clear if his prescription is based on any survey of RSS volunteers and supporters and the number of children they may have. Media reports suggest that the RSS chief, while speaking at an event in Nagpur, referred to ‘modern population science’ and cited ‘loksankhya shashtra’.

“When the population growth is below 2.1, a society perishes on its own. Nobody destroys it. It no longer exists anywhere in the world,” he was quoted as saying in Marathi by the Indian Express.

The RSS chief, significantly, seldom speaks on education, health or employment policies. Nor does he voice his worries about raging wars and the race for weapons or, indeed, about climate change and the wanton destruction of the environment — any or all of which may lead to the destruction of the planet.

Is it important for couples to have at least three children, said the RSS chief, and warned that India’s TFR (total fertility rate), which is currently estimated at 2, must increase to ensure the survival of society.

As per the fifth round (2019–21) of the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) conducted by the MoHFW, our TFR had declined to 2.0 children per woman, from 2.2 children in the fourth round of NFHS (2015–16) — resulting in the achievement of the replacement level of fertility, which is 2.1 children per woman.

The ‘replacement rate’ indicates couples replicating themselves by giving birth to an average of a little more than 2.0 children per woman to compensate for the loss of lives due to any reason. Every generation thus replaces itself by giving birth to 2.0 children per woman. The NHFS-5 study, however, also went into the TFR in each state and also to women by their religion. It showed that while fertility rate among Muslim women had been falling more steeply, it was still marginally higher than Hindu women. The findings also corroborated the theory that more educated the women are, the fewer children they give birth to.

At least five states — including Bihar (2.98), Uttar Pradesh (2.35), Jharkhand (2.26), Meghalaya (2.91) and Manipur (2.17) — had a TFR well over the replacement rate, however.

With population deciding the representation of the states in Parliament and also forming the basis for central grants and central tax devolution to states, several chief ministers in southern states — notably Chandrababu Naidu and M.K. Stalin — have expressed apprehension that they would lose out to the more populous states in the north. They have spoken in favour of women giving birth to more children too

However, it is not clear if the RSS chief wanted only those states to go for more children where the population is declining.

In 2021, the RSS chief had advocated a population control policy, stating that India would find it difficult to feed a growing population. “How many people can India feed after 50 years… what kind of education and healthcare will be provided to people if the population continues to grow…Our country has a huge population — this is a reality. Populations require resources and if it keeps growing it becomes a big burden, perhaps an unbearable burden,” he had said then in his address.

Since then, he has evidently read the Loksankhya Shashtra.

The RSS has, twice in the last two decades (2004, 2015), passed resolutions on population control policy. The resolutions maintained that effective laws on conversion, an NRC and checks on infiltration are things the government needs to work on in order to develop the policy, which should be made keeping in view the availability of resources in the country, future needs and the problem of demographic imbalance — and should apply the same to all, uniformly.

Back then, Bhagwat was roundly criticised for suggesting a coercive population control policy, with the critics pointing out that India had already achieved the replacement fertility rate without following any coercive policy. A majority of Indians are young and they lack education, employment, government support and jobs, the critics had stated, and emphasised the need for more investment in the young and improving education and health.

The UN report released last year estimated that India’s elderly population (people over 60 years old) will grow at a rapid 41 per cent between 2021 and 2031. It further noted that the number of elderly people will be larger than the number of children (people who are younger than 15 years old) by 2046. In 2021, there were 39 elderly persons for every 100 children in India, and 16 elderly persons for every 100 working-age persons.