Outdated contraception, early conception: Counting the babies that India didn’t plan for

The baby India didn't plan for may become rarer in future. That is worth paying attention to. The more pressing concern now is the recent decline in the use of modern contraceptive methods, which risks leaving the country's remaining unwanted-fertility gap in place even as the headline TFR falls. (Representative image) Today, India’s most popular headline about its population is simple: The average woman is having about two children over her lifetime. That single figure has become a shorthand for “India has reached replacement-level fertility”, and in one sense it is true. But successive Sample Registration System (SRS) and National Family Health Survey (NFHS) rounds tell us something that should make us pause: India has achieved below-replacement fertility despite the near universality of