What the ‘average’ decline in number of kids doesn’t tell you

The total fertility rate in India has dropped to 1.9, but many women still lack real choice

Sixty-four-year-old Saraswati Devi was married off at 16 in 1976, and by the time she was 30, she was a mother to five sons. If she could do it all over again, Saraswati says she would have fewer children. But her granddaughter Pooja Kumari today has a voice. A graduate, married at 22, she and her husband decided to not have more than two children.
Residents of Bihar's Sheikhpura district, they reflected on how things have changed from grandmothers to granddaughters over 65 years as women gained a voice slowly to an extent over generations affecting fertility aspirations.