Although India With 1.4 billion people and growing, it will soon become the most populous country in history.the situation in the Indian state of Sikkim has become so dire that the local government is essentially paying people to have babies.
The effort takes aim at a demographic reality in India that is often overshadowed by its sheer scale. Its population growth is extremely uneven. A couple of states in the underdeveloped north account for much of it. Other parts of India, particularly the south — where incomes are higher and women are better educated — look more like East Asia or Western Europe, with aging populations that are shrinking or will shrink in the coming years.
In Sikkim, located in the Himalayas and surrounded on three sides by Nepal, Bhutan and Tibet, the birth rate has plummetedauthorities say, due to a lack of economic opportunity, often forcing men and women to seek work outside the state, leading to marriages later in life.
Sikkim women have enjoyed greater freedom than those in other rural areas of India, where they are often confined to housework and child-rearing. With a female labor force participation rate of 59 percent, much higher than the national average of 29 percent, young women are choosing careers over early marriage and having fewer babies.
State officials want couples to have at least three children. Government statistics show that women there have an average of 1.1 children during their reproductive years, well below the national rate of 2 and below the rate of 2.1 needed to maintain a stable population.
Since August, Sikkim has been offering cash to citizens of reproductive age and without children for IVF treatment. It also offers couples with one child a monthly stipend of around $80 if they have more.
Since the Sikkim policy was instituted, more than 100 couples have opted for IVF treatment. But the government must deal with widespread stigma, including rumors that babies born through the therapy are made in “plastic boxes” or that those children are genetically someone else’s.
Arpana Chettri, 40, a bureaucrat living in Gangtok, the capital of Sikkim, has experienced the stigma. She gave birth to a girl after IVF. “But now, the problem is that people ask, ‘Did you get the girl after the injection?’” she said, referring to the misconception that IVF babies are made in test tubes. “I received dozens of injections and it was painful. But she was inside me for nine months, not in a refrigerator,” she said.
SAMEER YASIR
THE NEW YORK TIMES
BBC-NEWS-SRC: http://www.nytsyn.com/subscribed/stories/6740831, IMPORTING DATE: 2023-06-01 14:00:09
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