India is set to overtake China as the world's most populous country this year, but a small state in the South Asian nation's mountainous northeast is worried about its shrinking indigenous communities and urging them to have more babies
Sikkim, a state with fewer than 700,000 people, has India's lowest fertility rate and now wants families to have three children, making it the first to do so in a country where authorities, in a bid to fight overpopulation, have long pushed parents to stop at two.
The border state also recently announced incentives like year-long maternity leave for women, month-long paternity leave for men, and financial support for those seeking pregnancy through in-vitro fertilisation.last year for the first time in six decades, a historic turn that is expected to mark the start of a long period of decline with major implications for its economy and the world.
India's total fertility rate - children per woman - fell to 2 in the latest assessment period, for 2019-2021, from 3.4 in 1992-93, according to a government report issued in October. It estimated that the average must be 2.1 for the population to reproduce itself. The population of at least two of Sikkim's 12 indigenous communities - Bhutia and Limbu - have been declining in recent years, state official Dhakal said, without providing any data.
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