While attending a wedding in March, M. K. Stalin, the chief minister of India’s fastest-growing state, Tamil Nadu, made a peculiar request: “Earlier we used to say, take your time and have a baby. But now the situation has changed. . . . I urge newlyweds to immediately have babies.” In the world’s most populous country, such a remark might seem absurd; for much of independent India’s history, the policy imperative, after all, has been population control rather than population growth. But Stalin’