New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government are really very worried about India’s population – or so they have led us to believe.On Independence Day in 2019, he said, “We need to worry about population explosion” and need “schemes to control it”. Then next year, in 2020, he said, “population control is a form of patriotism”. He went on to commend small families on their patriotism.Just before the general elections in 2024, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman said “that rising population growth and demographic changes pose challenges to the goals of ‘Viksit Bharat’”, as she presented the Interim Budget 2024-25 on February 1, 2024.Sitharaman proposed that “a high power committee will be formed for extensive consideration of the challenges arising from fast population growth and demographic changes”. She further added the committee will be mandated “to make recommendation for overcoming the above challenges”.It is not clear who is on the committee and what work they have done, since.In election speeches in 2024, Modi, on campaigns for his party, several times tried to make “those who have more children” an election issue in the Hindi heartland. He said (wrongly) in Banswada, Rajasthan, that his predecessor government wanted to give more resources to “those who have more children”. Maybe the population explosion slogans were dog whistles for certain communities alone. Hum paanch, hamare pacchees (We are five, we have 25), his taunts to Gujarati Muslim communities, are well recorded from his time as chief minister of Gujarat.Subsequent statements from the BJP’s ideological gurus, the RSS’s chief Mohan Bhagwat for instance, saying Hindu families “should have three children (or more)” (hum do, hamare teen) has made it clear, of course that the concern has been sectarian and not developmental. The ‘concern’ has been of only non-Hindu families allegedly rapidly increasing their numbers. (That too has been debunked by census 2011 data and subsequent numbers.)India’s population is not exploding, even though Modi and others have been keen to repeat that it is. The 5th National Family Health Survey (2019-2021) shows that India’s fertility rate has dropped. Other data also shows that India’s population growth rate has decreased from 1.73% in 2001 to 1.04% in 2018.This concern from the Modi regime, though, now seems to have disappeared completely, in an unexplained and inexplicable way.In a dramatic turnaround to reward population increase, the Modi government wants to suddenly bloat the Lok Sabha, trying to use the slogan of ‘women’s reservation’ (which is already done and dusted, and the law in India) as a shield.With the formulation proposed in the three bills, the Union government is intentionally only rewarding high population regions. Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Uttarakhand, Delhi and Gujarat benefit disproportionately.Also, as facts and demographic trends in India go, population experts have already debunked the population explosion theory and spoken of the sharp and dramatic fall in India’s Total Fertility Rate (TFR) – in several areas, well below the 2.1 needed to ideally stabilise/maintain population.Poonam Muttereja, executive director of the Population Foundation of India, has said, “there is no evidence of population explosion in the country. Demographic transition is under way in India.” She added that “the Indian Census data on population confirms that the decadal growth rate during 2001-2011 had reduced to 17.7% from 21.5% over 1991-2001. India’s Total Fertility Rate has also declined substantially from 3.2 in 2000 to 2.2 as per the 2018 Sample Registration System.”