India’s population paradox: Why Sridhar Vembu is worried about falling birth rates

“There were fewer births in China in 2025 than in 1776, the year the US declared independence.” That stark comparison, shared by Zoho co-founder Sridhar Vembu in a recent post on X (formally twitter), has reignited debate around a problem India is only beginning to confront: declining birth rates. 

India, now the world’s most populous country with around 1.20 billion people, may be demographically secure at first glance. But beneath that milestone lies an unexpected and fast-emerging challenge. Fertility rates are falling sharply in several southern states, raising concerns about the future workforce, ageing populations, and even political representation.

Demographic shift 

For decades, India’s population growth was seen as a hurdle to development. Today, policymakers are facing the reverse scenario. A sustained decline in births could shrink the working-age population, strain healthcare and social security systems, and weaken states’ political clout, as parliamentary seats and federal funding are linked to population size.

While India as a whole is estimated to have recorded about 22 million births in 2025, that number is falling — and faster in the south than elsewhere. Tamil Nadu, for instance, is experiencing a steeper decline in births than the national average, making it one of the clearest indicators of the demographic transition underway. 

The shift is already visible on the ground. Overall school enrolment dropped to a seven-year low of 24.68 crore in 2024-25, according to a government report, marking a decline of 11 lakh students from previous year. Strikingly, enrolment in classes 1 to 5 fell by 34 lakh, pointing to fewer children entering the education system and signalling long-term changes in India’s population structure.

'Learn from China & Japan' 

Vembu has repeatedly warned that India should pay close attention to what is happening in China and Japan. Citing Chinese government data, he noted that births in China fell to 7.92 million in 2025 — 1.62 million fewer than in 2024 — pushing the country’s total fertility rate down to 0.93. 

“These trends are going to dominate how we view the world in the coming decades,” Vembu wrote, adding that Tamil Nadu’s decline in births is even steeper than India’s overall trend. He has said this concern partly drove his decision to move to rural India, where larger families are still common. “I consider being surrounded by children the blessing of my life,” he said. 

Earlier, Vembu linked falling birth rates to modern lifestyles, urbanisation, and changing social norms. In February 2025, he argued that traditional communities living in large family clusters tend to have more children, while “sophisticated” urban societies that prioritise privacy and individual space often do not. He has also pointed to Japan’s demographic decline after its economic peak in the 1990s and warned that once fertility rates fall sharply, reversing the trend is extremely difficult. 

Alarm bells 

At the ninth governing council meeting of NITI Aayog, Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged states to prepare demographic management plans to deal with population ageing in the future — the first time such concerns were formally raised at a forum bringing together the Centre and states. 

Some states are already moving towards intervention. In July 2025, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu said his government would soon introduce a policy to encourage higher birth rates, warning that persistently low fertility in South India could eventually affect the region’s representation in Parliament. 

Concern echoed by Elon Musk 

India’s situation mirrors a global trend that has drawn repeated warnings from Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. Musk has consistently argued that declining birth rates pose one of the biggest existential risks to civilisation, even more severe than climate change. Commenting on population trends across Europe, East Asia, and China, he has warned that “population collapse” could lead to economic stagnation, labour shortages, and long-term national decline. 

His remarks have added an global dimension to India’s debate, reinforcing the idea that demographic slowdown is not just a regional or national issue, but part of a worldwide shift. 

Experts caution that demographic decline, once entrenched, is hard to reverse. China and Japan, despite incentives and policy interventions, have struggled to lift birth rates meaningfully. As Vembu has noted, there are few examples of countries that have successfully turned such trends around.