IF political power is a matter of how fecund you are, then Indians south of the Vindhyas have cause for worry. While they have managed to rein in their reproductive rates in the last three decades, their cousins up north, despite crores of rupees spent in family planning programmes, have miserably failed to keep their families small. The result: a demographic North-South divide that may, paradoxically enough, tilt the scales of political power in favour of the North.