the writer (who appears to be anonymous?) shamelessly omits citing or linking to any source for this, and i can't find it. there's a WaPo article [1] claiming a similar thing, where their assertion is backed up by a broken link. when i search "India fertility rate" the most relevant thing i can find suggests this to be 2.18 as of this year [2]. this source's numbers match the St Louis Fed's numbers [3] up to the point that the fed lacks data (2019).
help me out here. the claim that fertility rates are falling faster than predicted -- and that replacement rate has already been reached -- is central to this article. so on the surface, this article seems entirely untrustworthy.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/11/25/india-birth-...
[2] https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/IND/india/fertility-ra...