While attending a wedding in March, M. K. Stalin, the chief minister of India’s fastest-growing state, Tamil Nadu, made a peculiar request: “Earlier we used to say, take your time and have a baby. But now the situation has changed. . . . I urge newlyweds to immediately have babies.” In the world’s most populous country, such a remark might seem absurd; for much of independent India’s history, the policy imperative, after all, has been population control rather than population growth. But Stalin’s statement had little to do with population policy. It had to do with political power.
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