The Andhra Pradesh administration has recently removed the two-child policy for the contesting candidates in the local body polls, which is the eradication of a long-standing restriction. This significant change was brought about when the state assembly passed two key pieces of legislation on Monday: the AP Municipal Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2024 and the AP Panchayat Raj (Amendment) Bill, 2024 as reported to NDTV.

Implementation and Purpose of the Two-Child Policy

The two-children policy was implemented in May 1994 and prohibited all the candidates intending to contest for the seats in the Zilla Parishads, Mandal Praja Parishads and Gramme Panchayats from excluding them if they have more than two children. Its original purpose was to reduce population growth in response to other government policies in the field of family planning. The rule was saying no to all those who wanted to have more than two kids, something which the government deemed as unsuitable due to its discouragement of population explosion and to encourage family planning.

But, the policy has now been declared outdated and needs a change with the new concept in accordance with the vision of Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu. He classified the two-child rule as regressive and pointed out the new social economic and demographic realities of the state. This past year, Naidu said the government has successfully put in place family planning measures but today the government wants families and women to have more children by paying them to reproduce. This change is part of the administration’s demographics tuitions strategies especially regarding the declining birth rate in this state.

Declining Birth Rates in Andhra Pradesh

The two-child limit has been removed to address State’s declining fertility rate which for several years has been registering a downward trend. NFHS-5 of the year 2019-21 shows an overall TFR of 1.7 for Andhra Pradesh which is below the replacement level of fertility (TFR 2.1). This is a decline further from 1.9 in NFHS-4 (2015-16) and shows a continued decline in fertility rates in the country.

Rural vs. Urban Fertility Rates

Also, there is a higher TFR in rural areas, 1.78 children per woman, than in urban areas where TFR is much lower, equal to 1.47. The survey also showed that a more than three-quarter of women 77% and 74% of the men aged between 15 to 49 years in the state either do not want to have more children, are themselves unable to have children or have a spouse who cannot conceive again. This points out the demographic dynamics and stresses the necessity of developing new policies for solving the problems arising from the given trends.

Moreover, according to the survey, 22% of women and 26% of men, who are willing to conceive another child, would like to postpone pregnancy for at least two years. Notably, while only 15 per cent of the state respondents think that it is appropriate to have children, most of the male respondents, 86 per cent, and all the female respondents, 91 per cent, consider it ideal to have two or fewer children. Swinging of such societal paradigms also gives more credence to the government to remove the two-child policy because it has largely become irrelevant to present-day family planning visions and trends.

The approval of the AP Municipal Laws (Amendment) Bill and the AP Panchayat Raj (Amendment) Bill shows that the state government has realized that the policies that seek to curb population growth through measures including the two-child policy, are now redundant. The government argued that repeal of such provisions would encourage a more participatory system, correspond to the current state population’s moral principle, and conform to the modern tendency and international standards as well as the demography type.

Aligning Local Governance with Current Demographics

The government feels that this will help in coming up with a diverse political field whereby persons with many dependants will be encouraged to engage in local politics. The decision to remove this restriction is aimed at expanding political representation, although it was especially painful in the rural territory due to the existing two-child limits. Long term, state leadership is confident that this change will assist in bringing local governance systems in tune with socio-economic realities and demographics that define modern statehood.

Therefore, the abolition of the two-child rule must be regarded as a major departure in Andhra Pradesh’s population regulation and local government system. That the administration agrees with the fact that policies have to be aligned with current demographic and social realities is a positive step towards better political inclusion. As acknowledged in the policy, though the policy aims at controlling population growth may have been relevant in the outcome but not in the present demography of the state and rising fertility rates. There are always likely to be ramifications of such a reform that may affect future local governance as well as the socio-economic fabric of the state in future.