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A political debate has erupted in Tamil Nadu following the Vijay-led TVK government's decision to extend maternity leave to 365 days for government employees having a third child.
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00:04this is news track and we are starting with some piece of breaking news which is just coming in
00:09pakistan has launched a strong protest over u.s ambassador sergio gorge's remarks that
00:15jaman kashmir is an important part of india pakistan in fact has summoned the u.s charge
00:21defer in islamabad and has lodged a strong dimash over remarks made by the u.s ambassador to india
00:28sergio gorge during his visit to jaman kashmir pakistan has rejected the characterization
00:33of jaman kashmir as part of india calling it an internationally recognized disputed territory
00:39islamabad has said that the remarks were factually incorrect and inconsistent with the u.s's
00:45a long-standing position on the jaman kashmir dispute let's listen in to what sergio gorge
00:52headset and then i bring in the reporters i'm the u.s ambassador to india and this is an important
00:59part of india and so i'm here visiting for the first time it is an incredibly beautiful place
01:05and so i'm thrilled to be here thrilled to see this place we just had a very good meeting and
01:12we have some follow-ups that we hope to take back to washington back to delhi but um a very
01:17very warm and very cordial um and we look forward to building this relationship forward
01:24shivani sharma and geeta mohan are joining us live uh geeta mohan uh he's coming to you first
01:31how should this be seen well uh exactly how we look at the issue of jambu and kashmir it's an
01:38integral part of india certainly would be the reaction of ministry of external affairs but
01:43uh when uh the u.s ambassador went to kashmir and spoke of uh kashmir being a part of india
01:49we had
01:50expected a summon uh in his clamor about all the shah's affairs uh of america and certainly that is
01:57what has happened lodging a complaint uh but they do not they do not look at it the same way
02:02when
02:03they take american diplomats to pakistan-occupied kashmir maria
02:10many would say that this was expected but the fact is that jambu and kashmir is an integral part
02:16of india so it's almost a statement of fact by sergio gore here well that's right and that's how
02:22india has been seeing it in fact tomorrow he's also traveling to ladha it's an important visit
02:27not the first time that an american diplomat has visited jambu and kashmir and yes he did meet with
02:32the leadership there he met with chief minister omar abdullah as well uh uh certainly an issue
02:38uh an optic that at this point in time pakistan will certainly be riled with and we have seen the
02:44reaction with that uh pakistan summoning and issuing a very very strong demash if you look at the
02:50statement that has been issued by the ministry of foreign affairs in pakistan it certainly is a very
02:55strong statement they have put out uh talking about the fact that uh this uh was unbecoming in many
03:02ways than one uh but america has put its uh position and stand very very straightforward when it comes
03:08to the issue of kashmir and over here a very important statement made by sergio gore ambassador
03:15of america to india where he said that kashmir is a part of india and he is engaged the political
03:21leadership of of jammu and kashmir all right geeta thank you so much for joining us uh shifting focus
03:28to our top debate this evening tamilnadu has made a major policy push as concerns grew uh grow over
03:36its declining fertility rate and aging population the vijay led tamilnadu government has expanded
03:42maternity leave for women government employees having a third child to to 365 days up from 12 weeks
03:51the move has sparked a wider debate over whether southern states which have successfully
03:57stabilized population growth are now facing the demographic consequences of lower fertility
04:04needless to say the timing is significant with the prospect of future delimitation based on population
04:11figures there are growing concerns in the south that states which achieved population control could see
04:17their political representation reduced relative to faster growing states tamilnadu's fertility rate
04:25currently stands at 1.7 well below the replacement level of 2.1 so is this simply a welfare measure
04:33to
04:33support mothers or part of a larger conversation about population political representation and south's
04:41future before i bring in top voices from the state here's a report
04:50in a major push to address india's falling fertility rate the tamilnadu government has announced a big
04:57maternity benefit for women government employees the vijay led tamilnadu government has extended
05:03maternity leave to 365 days for women government employees who have a third child up from the existing
05:1112 weeks the move comes amid growing concerns over the sharp decline in fertility rates across southern
05:18states while the proposal received unanimous support in tamilnadu the congress has questioned the push for
05:25a third child tamilnadu is a very successful state because of its two-child norm the any kind of alterations
05:33from that part must be discussed in a much better forum the move comes at a time when southern states
05:41are already raising concerns over delimitation and the possible impact of population-based criteria
05:48on their representation in parliament and tamilnadu is not alone in pushing the second child debate
05:56chief ministers chandrababu naidu in andhra pradesh and revanth reddy in telangana have also spoken in
06:03favor of encouraging larger families amid declining fertility rates
06:07according to the national family health survey fertility rates across south india
06:33have fallen shop telangana stands at 1.9 children per woman andhra pradesh karnataka and keralim are at
06:411.8 tamilnadu has the lowest fertility rate among these states at 1.7 tamilnadu has now taken the lead
06:51on
06:51maternity leave with this move the initial proposal was for 90 days which after 15 years has now been
06:59expanded to 365 days of leave for a third child this has brought the southern demographic agenda into
07:07focus could such measures change the demographic landscape of south india over time with anaga
07:13keshav and promote madhav bureau report india today me first on the show is s guru moorthy editor of
07:22tugluck magazine uh mr gurumurthy appreciate your time tamilnadu was among the first states to champion
07:31family planning the two child norm uh the that policy which was shaped for over three decades by
07:41incentivizing a third child with a full year's maternity leave is the present vijay government
07:47actually quietly reversing that legacy sir see this is not an issue merely to be discussed whether it
07:57is two child or three child or whether family planning that was initiated 30 years ago uh is appropriate or
08:09not is the issue you know the population replacement replacement ratio of tamilnadu has gone beyond below two
08:20so for an economy to thrive it is important to maintain population balance if the population ratio goes
08:30below two the ratio of working population to non-working population will reduce
08:37that is the problem of most western nations and also china today and japan is suffering from it hugely
08:47so it is not that a policy population policy which was good at one point of time will be good
08:56at
08:56another point of time particularly economics uh never recognized a demography as an asset
09:0325 years ago 25 years ago 30 years even 10 15 years ago it was not very well noticed so
09:11maintaining
09:12population balance is important and in tamilnadu particularly there has been an erosion in the actual
09:21accretion to the population i think uh this is right this has nothing to do with in my view as
09:28many people say about uh this uh uh the new law that is coming about the uh delimitation issue delimitation
09:42if children uh are beginning to be born now it will take 18 years but the more important thing is
09:50to have
09:50children more children and tamilnadu needs it okay you know um would you then say mr gurumurthy that there
09:57is a need for a demographic study that should justify this shift otherwise it will be seen as optics
10:06perhaps dressed as welfarism
10:11i agree but demographic study should not be limited to only one state or two states it has to be
10:19an all india phenomenon which state requires continued family planning which state doesn't require
10:27and it also means which community requires and which community doesn't require but are we mature for
10:33that kind of approach policy approach today will the media take up this and talk about there has to be
10:41population balance not only in terms of regions but also in terms of religion it all loves of language
10:49in everything otherwise india is a diverse country the diversity has to be preserved means it has to be
10:56preserved by a policy formulation which will ensure that the diversity continues otherwise there will be a
11:03dominant force which will develop which will overwhelm the diversity okay uh dmk's tks ilang govan has
11:11said that this move suggests that the government has abandoned family planning altogether is there a coherent
11:17population policy behind this or is the tvk government perhaps responding to falling fertility rate anxieties
11:25without a real road map you see in andhra chadrabha brunaidu has given began giving incentives to
11:34the third child so in there are states in which there are disincentives for the third child
11:43and if chadrabha brunaidu is right for andhra why not vijay fata may not of course dmk has to oppose
11:51everything that vijay does it's not that i am a great admirer of vijay but i am not an opponent
11:57of
11:57vijay dmk is an opponent of vijay its opinion has to be taken with a pinch of salt do you
12:04mean to say
12:05dmk has studied the demographic situation in taminadu if it has been then on the delimitation
12:13issue it has to take a position on par with vijay maybe after 20 years things can get corrected
12:20i don't think the dmk has approached it as in an unbiased manner which it cannot because it is an
12:28opposition party mr gurumurthy since you invoke chandrabha brunaidu how can we say that what's
12:34good for andhra is also good for tamilnadu
12:40in fact tamilnadu needs it more than andhra because tamilnadu's population is has virtually
12:47started falling in terms of growth rate and andhra is not that bad so if it is good for andhra
12:58which is better placed than tamilnadu in terms of population accretion why not tamilnadu which
13:04deserves this measure uh even more than andhra so is this more of a rushed announcement rather
13:12than a well thought out policy announcement would you say because he has completed hundred days in
13:21office you see i am not going to comment on vijay's government because i don't think it has
13:29started functioning yet because there are there are four five voices and four five centers of power
13:37contrary to what uh which i said that i'll be the only center of power he does not got it
13:43acts
13:43together announcements are coming because some somebody thinks and says let us announce it today
13:50and so some announcement is made come on ban the school children from participating in protests
13:55and within hours it is reversed and like that some appointments are made it is reversed so there is
14:02no coherent in government functioning for me to talk about what vijay's government is and i have been
14:07writing in my magazine that uh let vijay start functioning as a government as chief minister and as a
14:16an administrator then i will begin commenting otherwise the hundred days has no meaning
14:21then how do you assess vijay's uh first hundred days is it a genuine administration uh would you say
14:28that there is genuine administrative traction here or is this more of a cinematic charisma which is
14:34still uh doing the heavy lifting for this government i tell you this hundred days has no meaning he has
14:43five
14:43years to go and if he exhaust everything in hundred days or six months what will he do for the
14:49balance
14:49period you know what is important today is not the announcements but how the announcements are
14:56made and marketed i don't think there is any systematic marketing also because the man himself is not
15:02leading the campaign he is not speaking and his articulation is so poor and he seems nervous also
15:12you know unless the leader leads the discourse narrative even the announcements will not have value and the kind
15:19the people who are now speaking in the assembly they are speaking more like christian evangelists than
15:26than ministers and it is chaotic actually so i don't want to comment on it because the man is still
15:33to
15:33settle down so i have made a one-line comment let him start governing in the real sense of the
15:40term
15:40and put the government together because this government is hydro headed and the speaker is talking for the
15:48government so it's a chaotic situation so i am not going to comment on these hundred days and the
15:54announcements because these are listless and there doesn't seem to be any coherence or a systematic
16:05pronouncement of what the government stands for and where it will lead to and what will happen next
16:10month so i think it's a difficult situation for a highly inexperienced man and the team
16:18without a coherence within the party for example i don't know how many mlas
16:23vijay knows personally and how many mlas know each other whether district secretaries and mlas know each
16:30other you know this is the this is a crowd it's not a party yet so it's very difficult for
16:36me to say
16:37okay whether there is any impact on all this of course the vijay has his charisma but charisma is
16:46also to be sustained by action i'm going to ask you now about trisha krishnan she has no official
16:52role in this government yet she has become the central character in a dmk tvk slugfest the dmk's own
17:01mouthpiece murisoli called trisha's presence at the independence day event as shameful spectacle
17:07and that of course came days after then these talons remarks which landed him in custody
17:12do you see this as a deliberate dmk strategy to attack vijay through a woman who holds no political
17:19office you see i am not uh this is a very cheap politics that is going on and this started
17:27with
17:27the dmk if anybody we have began behaving cheaply in politics both in terms of words and deeds
17:35it is the dmk and in fact some of the terms which they used to speak in fact dmk is
17:42much more refined
17:42party today than it was in 1960s and 70s they will use unspeakable words about people about parties
17:51about nation about everything and so for the dmk to talk about such things it's really surprising
18:00because the dmk came out of this rut and i don't want to comment on any individual i don't want
18:07to
18:07even mention the name it's not correct if it is wrong it is not for dmk to say this let
18:15some important
18:16people say this that this is not the way and it is for vijay to handle this situation i don't
18:26want to
18:26get into it going back to the topic we began this interview with the south has long argued that it
18:33is being penalized for successful family planning lower fertility fewer looks above our seats less
18:41delimitation weight then mr gurumati is tamilnadu now reversing course to protect its political future
18:47and perhaps uh also its electoral heft going ahead
18:54i don't think anybody is planning for tamilnadu today after 20 years they are planning for the next
19:02few months or few years i don't think this is intended to correct the distortion that has arisen
19:08because of the population policy relative efficiently followed population policy by the south
19:16as compared to the north i don't think this is a measure to correct it but it is certainly
19:23a measure which is welcome from economic perspective and from the diver perspective of diversity
19:30i would put it more as social and economic phenomenon than as a political phenomenon
19:38all right as guru murthy pleasure speaking to you thank you so much and joining me now
19:42uh from chennai is uh karti chidambra member of parliament of the congress party from
19:48siwaganga uh kati you tweeted that while maternity leave is welcome the government should not be
19:56encouraging a third child in families and asked whether families have the resources to support a third
20:02child are you saying then that the vijay government hasn't thought through the economics
20:07or what it is really intensive incentivizing
20:15see i welcome maternity leave i think maternity leave must be a right for every working woman
20:24whether it's a private sector or government sector i also believe that it's time that we start giving
20:31paternity leave because child rearing can't be only the sole responsibility of mothers i think fathers
20:39need to also be involved and they need to spend time and shoulder the responsibility that being said this
20:49is a new government most almost all members of the legislature from the ruling party are first timers
20:58so they are being really led substantially in the early days by the bureaucracy so i'm not really very
21:06sure whether they are getting into the nitty-gritty of policy pronouncements before they are being made
21:14this maternity leave concession i won't even say it's a concession right has been only given to
21:20government servants this has not been extended to the private sector that too for the third child for
21:25whole year i believe that we don't need large families and i know that there are there is a group
21:31which says that the fertility rate is going down so we should increase our population i don't think that
21:36india is in any alarm of having a very low population in fact to the contrary i think we have
21:43a very large
21:44population and and if naturally there is a bit of a downsizing in the coming years in my personal
21:50opinion that is welcome because we need a healthy population we need a highly trained population to
21:56navigate in the 21st century further if you believe that people are aging i think 60 is no more an
22:02age
22:02to retire i think we can extend the age of retirement because people are far live longer healthier and are
22:08far more productive even in the later years so this argument that we need a young able-bodied population
22:15that's why we need to encourage families to have many children doesn't hold good and secondly there
22:20is a cost to having children you know to educate them to give them the resources and to to bring
22:26them
22:27to adulthood where they are independent there is a cost whether all families have the resources is
22:32questionable whether society itself has those resources is questionable so i am not in favor of
22:38large families i think we should encourage people to make their own decisions based on their own
22:42resources but government policy should not be to encourage large families but by and large i believe
22:48a stabilizing population or a declining population in in india is not a bad thing we can compensate it
22:54in many other ways by training people but extending their working lives by giving them access to better
23:00media medical facilities and education and not by merely building up numbers for the sake of building
23:05numbers and but while i welcome the maternity leave as a principle i think they must extend it to
23:12paternity leave as well okay those are very interesting thoughts there certainly karti chidambram
23:18tamil nadu's two-child norm is a proven success story delimitation is looming and the south certainly
23:25fears losing seats precisely because it succeeded at family planning is this third child push really about
23:32welfare because many are seeing this as tvk government hedging against that political arithmetic
23:44no no no anyway first and foremost i don't believe that we should have delimitation based on population
23:49anymore we should in fact the tamiladu assembly itself under this government has passed the resolution
23:55saying that parliament must be frozen at 543 and tamiladu's 39 seats must be preserved within that 543 i don't
24:02think that this is some sort of a program to to thwart the delimitation which the bjp might bring on
24:10basis of population i think bjp itself has given that up the swap they're giving to some client
24:15regional parties is that they will increase the seats uniformly by 50 percent of course there are i have
24:21enough arguments against that that principle as well but but my position is and the tamiladu assembly's
24:28position is that we must freeze parliament to 543 and that's what mrs indera gandhi did that's what
24:35mr vajpai did and we need to extend that for 25 more years okay uh your former ally the dmk
24:41has called
24:42this decision of uh you know chief minister vijaya as a betrayal of tamil nadu's family planning legacy
24:51would you say as the present alliance partner of tvk that there is a need for perhaps a detailed
24:59demographic study a white paper of sort before uh this policy announcement i would say a very rushed
25:07policy pronouncement
25:13see giving maternity leave is not going to uh you know for a year for the third child only for
25:20government servants is not a is not a a major policy pronouncement it's a it's a perk or a benefit
25:28given only to a small class of people who are government servants vast number of women are not
25:33government servants what happens to them so first and foremost i don't believe that families are
25:37equipped to have a third child because they must have the resources to educate the third child society
25:42must have the resources to support the child third child and and you know and you know give them the
25:48tools which they need to succeed in 21st century we don't need large populations to succeed in the
25:5321st century there are enough number of examples of much smaller countries than us which are highly
25:59educated and trained which succeed and india must have must right size this population naturally over
26:04a period of time i am not one of those who prescribes to large families i don't believe that this
26:10is
26:10this is some sort of a policy pronouncement of the government i don't know what deliberations the
26:15government had or whether they're just being led by some bureaucrats who have just inserted this as
26:20a policy pronouncement but i definitely don't accept this in fact when the andhra pradesh government
26:25also announced it and they gave some minor shops of some a few thousand rupees to people who are going
26:30to have a third child i vehemently criticized it i do not think any indian family should be large
26:35indian families must be must be small they they must have children must have the resources children must be
26:42well educated parents must spend time with children they must be involved in their development we need
26:47a highly educated trained workforce and if as i said earlier if you feel that that you know the
26:54working life can be extended for people we should extend that today 60 is no age to retire most people
26:59are hell and healthy at well past their 70s and even into their 80s so there is no reason for
27:05people to retire at 60 we can extend that so that we have
27:08working age people even for longer and then we have a highly trained population and especially in a
27:14technology thrust world you don't need large populations even armed forces don't need large
27:21large personnel it's all technology driven now you know kathy a lot of good thoughts there particularly that
27:29people at 60 should not retire i'm in agreement with that but let's put the spotlight back on
27:35uh uh chief minister vijaya's government of hundred days how do you see this as an alliance partner
27:41his governance see it's too early to pass judgment as i said that almost all of them are first timers
27:50they
27:50are finding their feet they're also perhaps relying on the bureaucracy a lot because it's very clear that
27:56there have been a few uh bloopers because of the uh bureaucracy for example today there was a
28:04diktat given saying that the students must be prohibited from participating in protests organized
28:09by left parties and by the cockroach and the party which was rescinded i think within an hour i think
28:15these are things which are creeping in because of their lack of experience i think the bureaucracy
28:20perhaps is tending to dominate them in the early days but they will find their their feet and they will
28:25find their political rhythm and they will they will they will i i think run will be able to run
28:30a
28:31government for the next five years smoothly but you have to give them time it's too early for me to
28:35pass judgment give them time uh that's perhaps the message that is coming from the alliance partner
28:40of the tvk there uh the congress party karthi chudamram i appreciate your time thank you so much for joining
28:45us
28:46that's all from me on this edition of news track i'll be seeing you tomorrow thanks so much
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