Let me say one thing clearly before anything else. Women should study. There is no debate in my heart about that. An educated woman is a woman with choices, and choices are her right.
So when people ask why fewer children are being born in India today, I do not blame women. I want to be honest about where the real weight of this sits.
Yes, the cost of living has risen. To raise a child well now you need money, good healthcare, schooling, security. All of this is real, and it presses on every young couple.
But underneath the economics there is something older.
For hundreds of years, maybe longer, our society dominated and suppressed women. We took them for granted.
That suppression did not simply vanish. It settled into the muscle memory of generations.
And what is held down for too long comes back, in our time, as friction. Some call it ego. I would call it the natural recoil of people who were kept small for too long.
Think of the man who earns while his wife does not, and who says, “I feed you, so you will listen to me.”
He does not see her as his partner. He sees her as someone who owes him obedience.
That is the wound.
And a woman who has felt it, or watched her mother feel it, will naturally want to stand on her own feet so no one can ever speak to her that way again. Who can blame her?
India's fertility rate has fallen to 1.9, the first time in modern history its gone below replacement rate.
If this trend continues, India's population will gradually decline.