Guwahati: The state of Sikkim has declared that female government workers who give birth to two or more children would earn additional pay raises and paid childcare attendants at home as it struggles with the lowest fertility rate in the nation and the possibility of seeing its population decline.
Prem Singh Tamang, the chief minister of Sikkim has suggested two increases for mothers who have their third kid and a special income increase for those who have their second child.
“The low fertility rate among the local indigenous population is a matter of serious concern in Sikkim…We must do everything in our hands to reverse the process,” Mr Tamang said at an event in Gangtok.
Sikkim, the state in India with the fewest inhabitants (7 lakh), has long struggled with a low total fertility rate (TFR). Sikkim has the lowest TFR in the nation, with a number of 1.1 for 2022, according to government figures. This indicates that women in Sikkim are often only having one kid. The national fertility rate in 2022 was 2.159 births per woman.
At least two of Sikkim’s 12 indigenous communities—the Bhutia and the Limbu have seen population declines in recent years, according to state officials.
The Sikkim government has also declared that it will send childcare attendants to the houses of female government employees to take care of young children in order to address this issue.
According to Chief Minister Tamang, women of 40 years of age and older will be engaged and dispatched to the homes of the women who work for the government to care for the infants for a year. The attendants will receive a monthly salary of 10,000.
The plan comes a week after Prem Singh Tamang, the chief minister, proposed financial and other incentives for indigenous women to have more children in order to increase the local population.
The north-eastern state is moving toward a policy that encourages families to have three children, making it the first to do so in a nation where officials have traditionally pushed parents to stop at two in an effort to combat overcrowding.