Context: India’s sharp decline in fertility rate is largely attributed to the change in socio-economic conditions
India’s demography transition outlook

• Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) findings: A new study published in the journal, The Lancet, argues that while India’s population set to be the largest in the world by the mid-century thereafter it will witness a sharp decline by the end of 21st
• Basis: The prediction is based on the assumption that on average, Indian women will have fertility rate of 1.29 by the year 2100 which will be below the replacement level and hence there will be a sharp decline.
• Anomaly: Though the population estimates for India by 2050 of both the UN and the IHME are similar (UN-1.64 billion by 2050, IHME projects 1.61 billion by 2048) there is a sharp contrast between their prediction  on India’s population growth  by the year 2100 ( UN predicts 1.45 billion by 2100, and the IHME, 1.09 billion).
• Reason For the anomaly: IHME models relies excessivelyon National Family Health Survey (NFHS) data regarding current contraceptive use. It is observed that contraceptive use in the NFHS is poorly estimated, and as a result, IHME model, generating remarkably low fertility projections for 2100.
• Demographic Future: Considering both the findings it can be said with certainty that, India’s demographic future will peak till mid-21stcentury   and subsequently declining population driven by a sharp reduction in fertility.

Understanding India’s success in lowering fertility rate

• India’s total fertility rate has fallen to 2.2 from 6 during 1950’s. However, the policy of family planning and forced sterilisation accounted for mere 17% decline in TFR from 5.9 in 1960 to 4.9 in 1980.
• Also, the target set by these policies were abandoned after Cairo conferenceon Population and Development in 1994 as these targets led to explicit or implicit coercion.
• In addition, thePunitive policies such as denial of maternity leave for third and subsequent births, limiting benefits of maternity schemes and ineligibility to contest in local body elections for individuals with large families has remained largely ineffective.

Significant Contributor for India’s Low fertility rate

• The socioeconomic transformation of India since the 1990s has contributed an important role. With the growth in schools and education resulted in more lucrative jobs that aided contraction in agricultural sector.
• Parents began to rethink their family-building strategies.The new aspirational parents saw education as a livelihood oppurtunity. Smaller families helped the parents to invest more money in their children’s education which has also guided the decline in fertility rate.
• India’s story of low fertility rate is in contrast to western countries, where the western countries attributes the decline in fertility to retreat from the familysystem although in India it can be attributed to the increased commitment of Indian parents to family by reducing the number of children and investing more in each child.

Conclusion: While the aspirational revolution has already started to hasten the fertility decline our health system should aid the process by providing basic contraception and sexual and reproductive health services that allow individuals to have only as many children as they want.