Demographic inequalities and implications for political representation in India

J Retnakumar, International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS)

The pattern of representation of the states in national Parliament of India will undergo a dramatic change in the coming years on account of varying pace of demographic transition among the states. Considering this, the Government of India imposed a freeze on further expansion of representation of states in Parliament till 2026. The focus of this paper is to identify the gainer and loser states in terms of representation, once the seats were re-distributed on the basis of population size of the states. Also, it examines how the value of vote has been changing with the growing demographic inequalities. The findings suggest that, all the northern states with higher population growth will gain substantial number of representations compared to those southern states with lower population growth. The emerging pattern of representation could lead to numerous conflicts in inter-state relationships and can endanger the federal-set up of India.