In this article, I claim that demographic engineering scholarship cannot adequately explain the production of demographic engineering practices because they suffer from two classic limitations of state theory: (1) assuming the political elite to be the sole producers of the state practices, and (2) treating the state as an actor. Following the latest theoretical insights on the complex ontology of the state, I claim that we can overcome these limitations of the current demographic engineering scholarship by focusing on interactions between political and bureaucratic actors involved with the demographic engineering policy. I use this insight to examine the population control policy of the Indian state during the Emergency period (1975–1977). My main finding is that the strategies of federal bureaucrats to reproduce their authority over the regional bureaucrats, lowered by political elite dynamics during the Emergency period, enabled the street-level bureaucrats to adopt coercive strategies for achieving their unrealistically high sterilization targets. My study contributes to the studies on demographic engineering, state theory, and the Emergency period in India by highlighting the significance of studying interactions among the political and bureaucratic actors in producing state practices, including but not limited to demographic engineering.

在本文中，我声称人口工程学术无法充分解释人口工程实践的产生，因为它们受到国家理论的两个经典局限性的影响：（1）假设政治精英是国家实践的唯一生产者，以及（2） ）将国家视为参与者。根据对国家复杂本体论的最新理论见解，我声称我们可以通过关注参与人口工程政策的政治和官僚行为者之间的相互作用来克服当前人口工程学术的这些局限性。我利用这一见解来考察印度国家在紧急时期（1975-1977）的人口控制政策。我的主要发现是，联邦官僚复制其对地区官僚权威的策略，在紧急状态期间因政治精英的动态而降低，使得街头官僚能够采取强制策略来实现其不切实际的高绝育目标。我的研究通过强调研究政治和官僚行为者之间的相互作用在产生国家实践（包括但不限于人口工程）方面的重要性，为人口工程、国家理论和印度紧急时期的研究做出了贡献。