By Shashi Tharoor

In recent weeks, Indian politics have been roiled by controversy over something that hasn’t happened yet: the government’s redrawing of the boundaries of parliamentary constituencies, which is likely to happen within the next few years, after a new census is carried out. The problem, India’s southern states argue, is that this will unfairly shift the balance of political power to northern states.

In India’s Lok Sabha (the lower house of parliament), seats are generally apportioned according to population: more people usually means more seats. Since whoever controls a majority of seats in the Lok Sabha gets to form the government, a larger population amounts to a major advantage.

But unbridled population growth can come at the expense of prosperity and social progress. So, in 1976, India froze delimitation (the process of redrawing constituency boundaries), thereby assuring states that they could seek slower population growth without sacrificing political influence. The freeze was initially set to last until 2001, but was extended by constitutional amendment, meaning that today’s boundaries are based on the 1971 census.

Since the freeze, India’s southern states have brought fertility rates down to or below replacement levels, and have made considerable progress on their human-development indicators, including literacy rates, health care, maternal and infant mortality, and gender equality. The north performs worse in these areas, as well as in terms of caste discrimination, unemployment, and economic growth, but its population has continued to grow.

The freeze on delimitation always had a time limit: until the first census after........

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