“It cannot have children”: investment banker warns the fertility crisis in India

The fertility rate in India has decreased below the replacement threshold for the first time – to 1.9 births for each woman – raises quiet alarm bells.

Sarthak ahuja is called a crisis of control, not choice, and indicating the ability to withstand costs, delayed paternity and motherhood, and regular stress as major engines.

In reference to the population report of the 2025 United Nations Fund, AHUJA wrote on LinkedIn that the fertility rate, which was once stable at the 2.1 replacement level, had decreased under it.

He warns that this trend reflects more than the demographics – it indicates that many Indians no longer feel power to start families.

“Nearly 40 % of the surveyed people said they could not have a child,” AHUJA notes, and they divide them into a lack of job security (21 %) and housing that cannot be tolerated (22 %) as higher barriers. 28 % mentioned the validity of twice (15 %) or infertility (13 %) as reasons – a suspected report on reporting the latter due to the stigma.

While India is still high -teenage fertility reports in certain areas, the delay in marriage in urban centers is worsening the problem. The functional focus, educational pressures, and high urban costs, have pushed many to postpone paternity, and often to more dangerous windows.

AHUJA defines two responses to this transformation.

First, couples choose to choose a distance in the cities of 2 or via satellites-where they accept lower salaries for living costs and family-friendly space. “1 dollar for cz in the town of Level 2 can extend beyond $ 2 to the metro,” as it argues.

Secondly, frozen eggs may become a nature among young women who focus on functional. AHUJA believes that it can turn from a margin option into a routine part of reproductive planning.

But the real anxiety, he says, deepen more than just numbers. “The problem is not really a decrease in the population (or a child or not) … It comes to people who feel that these decisions are not in their control.”