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Her anklets chime as she softly carries a tune on board the Hyderabad-Visakhapatnam Vande Bharat. When she is ready to talk, she does it just as casually. “I have PCOS (Polycystic Ovary Syndrome) and mood swings. I become happy when my uterus is happy and sad when my uterus is sad. I don’t want to bear children,” says S Mounika. “Hush,” says her friend, Ramya, from across the aisle, turning to look at the other passengers who have turned curious about the conversation.The 23-year-olds, both Bsc Computer Science graduates from Visakhapatnam, are on their way home to Pithapuram, in Kakinada district of Andhra Pradesh, after a job interview with a cargo firm in Hyderabad. Like her father, Sharon’s husband died of alcoholism, leaving the 18-year-old with a 2-year-old daughter. (Express photo by Nikhila Henry)Mounika goes on, “It’s been three years since I graduated. No job. The Chief Minister should think about creating employment for the youth rather than asking us to have more children.” In response to the state’s Total Fertility Rate (TFR or the number of children per adult woman) of 1.4, among the lowest in the country, the Andhra Pradesh government in March introduced a draft Population Management Policy, which aims to encourage families to have two or three children. After announcing Rs 25,000 last year for families that bear a second child, at a public meeting in Narsannapeta, Srikakulam, on May 16, Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu rolled out more incentives. “We will provide Rs 30,000 for a third child and Rs 40,000 for a fourth child. Isn’t this the right decision?” The audience of mostly men whistled and clapped. He then turned to where the women sat and said, “What do you think? Isn’t this the right decision?” The video pans to show some of them smiling. The demographic and economic argument behind Naidu’s appeal — that a falling birthrate will have long-term consequences for the state’s productivity and strain the government’s finances — may, however, come up against something far more fundamental: women’s autonomy.
No where is that expressed with better clarity than in Visakhapatnam — at 1.3, the district with the one of the lowest TFRs in Andhra Pradesh – and few say it as firmly as Mounika.Story continues below this ad Most women say they don’t want cash incentives for childbirth because bringing up children comes at a cost. (Express photo by Nikhila Henry)The daughter of a lorry driver and a homemaker, she says, “I want a government job, so I am trying to clear the Staff Selection Commission exams. I want to take care of my parents; not sacrifice everything for marriage and children. Someday, I might adopt a girl child, though. Do you think I will get a life partner who thinks like me? I really hope so. Fingers crossed, fingers crossed.” She holds up both her hands, the fingers in a desperate knot.
The cost of raising a child
In Visakhapatnam’s Appanapalem village, which sits below the famous Simhachalam temple, Papiyamma, 70, talks of a time when having children wasn’t about choice. “Whatever God gave, I accepted. Those days, everyone had four children or more,” says the mother of four, sitting in a room on the terrace of the two-storied house her late husband built, and where she now lives with her children and grandchildren.
Those days, she says, few dreamt of lives beyond their village. Papiyamma used to cultivate vegetables on the family’s land, graze cattle and feed her children. She even grew a little tobacco on 10 cents of land. On board the Hyderabad-Visakhapatnam Vande Bharat, S Mounika says she has been without a job since she graduated three years ago. (Express photo by Nikhila Henry)Sitting beside her on the cot, her son Appal Raju, 52, talks of the impact of a government policy from a different time. “I have three children because of my wife’s insistence. But because of that, I was not able to contest the local body elections,” he says.Story continues below this ad
Until 2024, the state’s two-
