BETTER PILLS FOR SOUTHERN DISCOMFORT

States shouldn't lose political clout if they develop well. Yet, southern states now face financial victimization and linguistic marginalization. We need equitable solutions, not more babies

- SHASHI THAROOR

The public calls by two southern chief ministers, Andhra Pradesh's Chandrababu Naidu and Tamil Nadu's M.K. Stalin—even if one may have been slightly tongue-in-cheek and the other seemingly in earnest—has once again brought focus on the imminent challenges facing the southern states from their declining populations.

There is no doubt that the population of the southern states has been growing much slower than that of the north for some decades, resulting in significant disparities. This has already had consequences in the award of the most recent Finance Commission, which has reduced the amount of central revenues being distributed to the southern states because of the increased weightage given to population in their calculations. Matters have come to a head with the imminence of the delayed 2021 census, which is now expected to conclude in 2026. Leaders in the south have suddenly woken up to the serious implications that a new census will have for their states.

While northern states such as Bihar, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh had a decadal population growth of over 20 percent between 2001 and 2011, southern states like undivided Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, Kerala, Karnataka, and Tamil Nadu grew at less than 16 percent in the 2001-11 period. My own state of Kerala has the country's lowest growth rate (4.9 percent over the decade, or less than half a percent a year). That is one-fifth of Bihar's growth rate. When the census is conducted, it will almost certainly show that Kerala has lost population since 2011. Andhra Pradesh is not far behind and may well find itself in the same boat.