In South India, they're worried. For following some stated national priorities, for performing well at them in comparison to the North, the states of the South might be punished: They stand to lose a certain quantum of political power.

India's 1971 Census counted about 548 million Indians. Primarily based on that number, the Lok Sabha - our Lower House of Parliament - has 543 elected seats, a number that hasn't changed since 1977. So at the time, each Member of Parliament represented about 1 million Indians. This also means that each individual state elected MPs to the Lok Sabha broadly in proportion to its population. Tamil Nadu, home to about 41 million people in 1971, has 39 seats. Uttar Pradesh, with about 88 million in 1971, has 85 seats. (When the state of Uttarakhand was hived off from UP in 2000, it got 5 of those 85 - for convenience, I'm clubbing the two here.)

And so on.

The idea was that this seat allocation would be periodically reviewed, and these numbers revised accordingly. That's what happened in the first few decades of Indian independence. The Lok Sabha had 489 seats in India's first election, in 1951. That increased to 494, then 520, and finally 543. All of which might make you wonder: if we had that gradual increase in our first 30 years, why have we had no change in the next 45?

Ah, but in wondering that, you're getting into Southern worry territory.

Also part of our early years was widespread concern about our increasing population. "Family planning" was a phrase familiar to us who grew up in a still-young India. A government firm, Hindustan Latex, manufactured and sold Nirodh, the first brand of condoms sold widely in the country. The slogan "Do ya teen bas" ("two or three is enough") appeared on walls and the sides of buses, was used in songs and became a pop culture meme. That slogan has mutated over the years into "Hum do, hamare do" ("The two of us and our two") and even "We two, ours one", suggesting that concern over a growing population has never abated.

Indeed: the Census counted 685 million of us Indians in 1981. 840 million in 1991. 1.03 billion in 2001. 1.21 billion in 2011. We haven't held another Census since - Covid put paid to the 2021 plans. But in 2023, population projections suggested that our numbers had overtaken China's. There are an estimated 1.43 billion of us, and that makes India now the world's most populous country. Our population has grown, and continues to grow, but what's also true is that the growth has been slowing for decades. In 2000, for example, we were growing by about 20 million people per year. That annual number is down to about 13 million today and should reach zero by 2060. (See this article.)

But back to our elected representatives. At a million Indians per MP, we should have somewhere near 1400 seats in the Lok Sabha today. Why are we still at 543? Well, it's that same Southern worry territory again.

The thing to note about India's population growth is that it is hardly even. For over four decades now, the southern states - Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Telengana, Kerala and Tamil Nadu - have been growing much more slowly than states elsewhere in the country - UP, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Bihar in particular. Why is this? Well, the southern states have done better at controlling their populations' growth rates than the rest. People there are generally richer, healthier and more educated - particularly the women - than the northern and central states. It's the old story that any number of countries around the world can relate to: as populations get more "developed" - richer, healthier and more educated - they produce fewer babies. Their growth slows and their numbers will eventually start declining. Japan and South Korea are good examples, and various other wealthy countries in the West are headed in that direction too.

In India, there's a stark implication of this uneven growth. If we revise the Lok Sabha numbers today according to our current population - a process we call "delimitation" - southern states will lose in comparison to the rest of the country. Take just the two states whose MP counts I listed above. Tamil Nadu's population is estimated at 85 million today, UP's at 253 million (still clubbing with Uttarakhand). Their current Lok Sabha strengths are 39 and 85, a ratio of a little less than half. If we were to allot them seats today by the same metric - 1 MP for 1 million people - we'd have TN at 85, UP at 253. That is, TN would have only a third of the number of MPs that UP would.

Naturally, TN has a question: Unlike UP, we have succeeded in slowing the growth of our population, so why then should we be punished in the Lok Sabha?

For what it's worth, the country has taken note of this uneven growth. This is why the number of Lok Sabha seats stayed at 543 after 1977. In 2002, we actually made this part of the Constitution, via the 84th Amendment. In part, the Amendment reads:

"There have been consistent demands, both for and against undertaking the exercise of fresh delimitation. Keeping in view the progress of family planning programmes in different parts of the country, the Government, as part of the National Population Policy strategy, recently decided to extend the current freeze on undertaking fresh delimitation up to the year 2026 as a motivational measure to enable the State Government to pursue the agenda for population stabilisation."

It could hardly be clearer. The way family planning has gone in "different parts of the country." The statement that the "freeze" on delimitation is explicitly "part of the National Population Policy strategy." In fact, the freeze is a "motivational measure" for individual states to work towards stabilizing their populations.

The motivation has indeed worked ... but far more effectively in the South. Consider one widely-accepted measure of population growth, the Total Fertility Rate (TFR), defined as the number of babies the average woman will have during her child-bearing years. A TFR of 2 is considered "replacement", because every couple will exactly replace themselves. (Because some babies die, replacement is usually taken as 2.1.) If a population reaches a TFR of 2, its population will eventually stabilize.

Take the performance since the 84th Amendment of, again, just the two states I've mentioned above. UP's TFR was 4.4 in 2003, and sank to 2.6 in 2023 - a commendable decline, but UP is still well above replacement. TN's was 1.9 in 2003, 1.4 in 2023. Put another way, UP's population growth is still growing, while TN's is levelling off. So delimitation today now will not only lessen TN's strength in the Lok Sabha compared to UP, that lessening will likely continue with any future delimitation exercises. Even if not by the 1 million per MP metric, TN stands to lose. One 2019 report estimates that after 2026, TN will have 31 seats and UP 91: again, a one-third ratio. (Similar data and reasoning apply to other states in the South vs the other "states with ballooning populations".)

All of this is no fantasy. 2026 is almost upon us. The government already has plans to hold the Census next year. The 84th Amendment's freeze will expire, so delimitation may be upon us as well. And the South is worried. In March this year, for example, TN's Chief Minister MK Stalin demanded that the freeze continue for another 30 years.

There are other possible measures, too. A respected academic I know has floated the idea that the representation calculation should be based not on the number of people in each constituency, but on the number of eligible voters in each constituency. This will benefit states with generally older populations - the ones, that is, that have done better with "the agenda for population stabilisation." Like TN. He has also written to Stalin suggesting that representation be tied to the TFR. That is, since TN's TFR is 1.4, its constituencies will be defined so that they average 1.4 million people per MP. UP's MPs, hoewever, will each represent 2.6 million people. With their current populations, that will give TN 60 and UP 97 MPs. Both states see an increase in their MP strength, but TN is rewarded for its population control efforts.

There is plenty more to examine in this vein that I won't get into here. But there's a larger point about democracy that's worth thinking about. As an ideal for democracy, equal representation is a fine mantra. But does it, should it, apply when conditions are less than ideal? Can it stand a dose of evolution when growth is uneven? When some states outperform others in apparently desirable national priorities?

When the mantra itself gets the South worried?