JOIN USHyderabad: Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu on Sunday sparked off a fresh debate on family planning, asking people of his state to have more children to sustain economic growth.
The row erupted even as the dust has barely settled on the controversy by BJP MP Sakshi Maharaj, who exhorted Hindu women to have four children to “protect the religion”.
Naidu’s call came on Sunday at West Godavari district, where he was addressing a political meeting after his padayatra along Velivennu, Singavaram and few other villages to commemorate the 19th death anniversary of TDP founder N T Rama
Rao.
“Nowadays young professionals are delaying marriage. Even if they get married, they don’t have children leading us to an imbalanced demographic scenario,” Naidu said.
“I was an advocate of two children norm, like one is good, two is OK... But AP has reached the replacement stage, meaning that every death is replaced by a birth. But if we don’t produce more children soon, we will have more old men, which means an unproductive population burdening the social security system,” Naidu said, asking people not to stop after two children.
Govt defends remark
The TDP government in the state played down Naidu’s comments by saying that the chief minister’s statement was more in the context of the “economics of demography”.
Addressing a press conference on Monday, state Finance Minister Yanamala Ramakrishnudu gave the examples of Europe and Japan where, he said, people are paying a heavy price for restricting demographic expansion.
“The elderly form the majority in those countries. The chief minister was only trying to explain the flipside of the two children norm,” he said.
Nonetheless, Naidu’s comments came under fire from social organisations and the Left parties, who accused him of treading the saffron path while the country is still struggling to grapple with overpopulation.
In a release, the Jana chaitanya Vedika (JCV) AP Committee pointed out that India houses 19 per cent of world’s population with the landmass of just 2.4 per cent. “It is highly deplorable for Naidu to follow the footsteps of the Sangh Parivar, forgetting that states like Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Odisha have undergone baby boom and suffered the consequences,” JCV state president V Lakshmana Reddy said.