Uttar Pradesh's proposed population policy might promise to take care of all communities, but the immediate adverse effect of the disincentives under the policy is likely to be felt by the poorest in the most deprived communities scheduled tribes, scheduled castes and Muslims and the immediate advantage of the incentives could be primarily to the well-off among the upper caste. The draft of the proposed policy says violators or those with more than two children would be barred from contesting local elections, applying for government jobs or getting subsidies under government subsidies under government welfare schemes. Government employees with more children than the norm would be barred from promotion. Available data on fertility levels suggests the brunt of these punitive measures will be borne by the underprivileged. This is no surprise as it is well established in public health that socio economic development is the biggest determinant of fertility. Data from the National Family Healthy Survey done in 2019-20 has not yet been released for Uttar Pradesh. But going by NFHS-4 data of 2015-2016 the fertility rate (or the total number of children born to a woman) for all categories except "others" which is mostly upper castes, is three or more. The fertility rate of scheduled castes was 3.1 of scheduled tribes 3.6 t hat of OBC 2.8 while for 'other' it was 2.3 Scheduled castes comprise roughly 21% of the state's population and Muslims about 20% while scheduled tribes are a negligible 0.1% of the population. Religion-wise the fertility of Hindus was 2.7 in 2015-16 and that of Muslims was 3.1. While fertility would have gone down a little across all communities, since the total fertility of the state came down from 3.1 in 2016 to 2.9 in 2018 according to SRS data, the relative difference is unlikely to have changed much. The NFHS-4 data on birth order showed that the highest proportion of briths which were thrid, fourth or higher order children (61.5%) was among women with no schooling.
