A year ago, a TDP MP in Andhra Pradesh offered Rs 50,000 to women giving birth to a third girl child, provided the first two children are also daughters. He promised a cow if the third child is a boy, spending from his salary as a parliamentarian. The announcement from Vizianagaram MP Kalisetti Appala Naidu was met with surprise and some derision back then. 

But now, Chief Minister Nara Chandrababu Naidu himself has made a very similar promise – Rs 30,000 and Rs 40,000 for the birth of a third and fourth child, respectively. This is the latest in a series of policy measures by the Andhra Pradesh government to manage the state’s slowing population growth. 

First, it lifted the ban on people with more than two children contesting local body elections. Then, Naidu said he was considering barring people with fewer than two kids from contesting. In March, Naidu announced a Rs 25,000 incentive for families with two or more kids, while telling the Assembly that about 58 percent families in the state had only one child. 

The government has also floated the idea of providing state-supported IVF treatment for couples dealing with infertility. 

Naidu has repeatedly stressed that the state's Total Fertility Rate (TFR) has declined to 1.5, which is well below the replacement level of 2.1 – the level at which a population replaces itself from one generation to the next, with each set of parents replacing themselves when a woman has two children. 

Offering cash to have babies is not unique to Andhra – many European and East Asian countries have done the same, though these incentives often come in the form of recurring monthly payments, sometimes combined with tax and housing subsidies, among other benefits. 

But can the women of Andhra Pradesh afford to have more kids, not just financially but physically and mentally, given their socio-economic circumstances? Here’s what data and activists from the state say. 

Targeting ‘poorest of the poor’ 

Naidu has often ridiculed the DINK (Dual Income, No Kids) lifestyle, where partners who both make money consciously choose not to have kids. While announcing incentives for having three and four kids, he said, “As people’s incomes rise, they’re stopping at having just one child.”

But such one-time paltry incentives are clearly targeted at the most vulnerable, poorest of the poor communities, said C Bhanuja, founder of the Anantapur-based non-profit Rural Environment and Development Society (REDS). 

“There are many vulnerable semi-nomadic communities that still do not have........

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