In populous India, Naidu wants more children for Andhra

Andhra Pradesh chief minister Chandrababu Naidu revived his campaign on making his state more populous. Addressing the ‘State Symposium on Child Nutrition’ jointly organized by Andhra Pradesh Assembly and UNICEF, Naidu expressed concern over the steep decline in AP’s population.

He cautioned the people that the fall in the population would lead to serious consequences like the ones being faced by some advanced countries. He said these countries were overburdened with an ageing population.

Sixty-five-year-old Naidu, who owns a large political party and successful business, might be experiencing the downside of having a single-child family. He has the tendency to remind people that he has only one child.

He said he felt sad that educated and rich people were observing one or no-child norms while the poor were opting for larger families. Naidu has only one child, son Lokessh, who is being seen by the TDP leaders as the CM waiting in the wings.

In the meeting attended by Assembly speaker Kodela Sivaprasada Rao and Legislative Council chairman A Chakrapani, Unicef India representative Louis-Georges Arsenault, Naidu asked people to have a relook at the practice of having one or no-child in the interest of the nation.

To buttress his point of view, he cited the statistics of the state’s population growth. “Andhra’s population is 4.95 crore. There is no growth. It is stagnant at this point. Next it will start falling,” he said.

In fact, Naidu launched the ‘more children’ campaign after his meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in 2014. According to sources in the government it was the Japanese PM who painted gloomy picture about the population disaster that accompanies creation of wealth.

“Naidu called on Abe on November 28 to invite Japanese participation in the construction of Andhra Pradesh’s new capital Amaravati.

During their interaction Abe is had narrated the demographic transition the Japan passed through and difficulties the country was facing with the present state of negative population growth,” the sources said.

Abe told Naidu, according to sources, how Japan, which is one of the richest countries in world, won’t have enough people in future to enjoy the wealth the island nation created with hard work in the post WWII era.

Naidu is worried that a similar crisis may be waiting to happen to AP as well when he has embarked on a mission to make the state one of the top five states by 2019, India’s number one state by 2029 and one of the top three economies in the world by 2050.

Upon arrival in Andhra Pradesh, Naidu shared his fears about demographic disaster waiting to befall on AP with bureaucrats and people.

Fresh from this enlightenment, Naidu launched a campaign against ‘one or none’ children families in West Godavari district. Naidu conducted a padayatra for “Smart Village’ for two days in the district in January advising the rural people to produce more children and denigrating the one or no-child norm as harmful to the nation. Naidu reminded them that he had just one child and that was not good.

Recalling his interaction, Naidu told the rural folk that “this (practice of having one or no child) should be stopped. Otherwise we will become like Japan where there are more old than the young. Have at least one or two children.”

But, these campaigns attracted severe criticism from all around. Lok Satta, CPI, YSRC and many intellectuals disputed Naidu’s demographic knowledge and statistics. They said AP had not reached the stagnation level yet and the population was growing at the rate of 1% per year. Later on Naidu stopped advising the people to produce more children. Now, he revived the campaign again yesterday.