Introduction
On the one hand, the government of India is spending Rs. 100 crores on publicity on population control, on birth control, as they call it. On the other hand, here is a bill whereby the Government becomes an abettor in population growth. You encourage people to produce more, to give birth to more children.
Lokanath Misra on Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Bill, 1965Footnote 1
Although the practice of maternity benefits in various industries in colonial India is documented from much earlier,Footnote 2 the first legislation on the subject came in the form of the Bombay Maternity Benefit Act of 1929. The alarming conditions of infant and maternal health and the growing concerns for labour welfare during the interwar period, along with the administrative changes brought by the introduction of dyarchy in 1919—which placed certain portfolios such as health in the hands of Indian legislators—intensified the campaigns for maternity benefits and ultimately led to the passing of maternity benefit legislation in the late colonial period.Footnote 3 These campaigns perceived maternity benefits as enabling measures for women to perform motherhood, regarded as their primary duty, otherwise compromised by the ‘tragedy’ of participating in paid employment.Footnote 4 The rationale for maternity benefits was sought in their utmost maternal function: reproducing the future nation.Footnote 5
The role of women in reproducing healthy citizens and nation-building was a central theme in the nationalist debates of this period. It became a justification for garnering support for various socio-political rights for women. The sub-committee on ‘Women’s Role in Planned Economy’ (WRPE)Footnote 6 recognized the economic value of unpaid housework and displayed radical visions for women’s economic participation. Yet it envisioned woman as ‘mother of the race’ while grounding its support for maternity protection.Footnote 7 The role of women in birthing and nurturing future citizens, and the need to teach them the necessary skills for this purpose, was emphasized by several political leaders, such as Amrit Kaur, who would become the first health minister in independent India.Footnote 8 Women members in the Constituent Assembly often articulated their demands for equality, grounded in women’s contributions to the nation, with motherhood and domesticity serving as crucial points of reference.Footnote 9
The relationship between woman and the state was mediated through family and community, where they were primarily imagined as ‘biological reproducers of members of nations and as cultural reproducers of national/ethnic boundaries’.Footnote 10 Women were merely treated as ‘targets for household and motherhood-oriented welfare services’ in the developmental planning of early independent India.Footnote 11 They were perceived in relation to their roles as wives and mothers, and the welfare measures for them concentrated primarily on facilitating these roles.Footnote 12 With the exclusive focus on their biological reproduction, women were made invisible in the discourse on development.Footnote 13
Women as reproducers of future citizens and the role of maternity benefits in enabling them to perform that function have remained a major rationale for maternity benefit legislation. However, in the mid-1960s, maternity benefits came to be widely interrogated for allegedly conflicting with the national family planning programme. Limiting maternity benefits as a disincentive strategy was proposed through various platforms. While discussing the Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Bill of 1965, Shankuntala Paranjpye, a member of the Rajya Sabha,Footnote 14 sought to add a restrictive clause limiting maternity benefits to the first two deliveries. The debates that followed brought to the fore concerns about ‘overpopulation’, the reproductive behaviour of working-class women, and the relationship between maternity benefits and population control. Legislators posed questions about whether maternity benefits lured working-class women to produce more children. They regarded maternity benefits as contradictory to population control and suggested limiting their availability as a disincentive strategy for that purpose. Some, however, maintained that such punitive measures were unethical, despite their concern for the imminent ‘population explosion’. Similar concerns were also raised in the print media, where the seemingly conflicting objectives of the two policies were discussed.
The existing scholarship on maternity benefits in India primarily focuses on the historical emergence of maternity benefit legislation in the late colonial periodFootnote 15 and the contemporary legal framework governing maternity benefits, with an emphasis on the 2017 amendment to the Maternity Benefit Act.Footnote 16 The debates on maternity benefits in the mid-to-late twentieth century remain largely unexplored. Adopting a historical lens, this article examines how the debates on maternity benefits and population control got entangled in the mid-1960s. It was a period when the country faced a famine-like situation and economic crisis, making it virtually dependent on funding from international bodies such as the World Bank and the Ford Foundation.Footnote 17 Nevertheless, as Connelly (2006) has observed, these international bodies should not be held entirely responsible for the imposition of population control in India. It received considerable support also among the national elites.Footnote 18 Scholars have also examined how the programme targeted the marginalized sections, such as the religious minorities, the scheduled castes, and the poor.Footnote 19 This article contributes to these works by examining how the reproduction of the working class was brought under scrutiny on the grounds of overpopulation.
The usage of incentives and disincentives during the Emergency (1975–77) has received considerable scholarly attention.Footnote 20 Landman (1977) has discussed the promised incentives in the National Population Policy (1976) for promoting birth control. Although the policy did not explicitly mention disincentives, Landman shows that measures such as limiting maternity leave, daily rations, and educational scholarships were being deployed by several state governments.Footnote 21 Connelly (2006) draws our attention to the pre-Emergency period, demonstrating that, despite the government’s avoidance of the explicit use of terms such as ‘incentive’, the practice of incentives and disincentives was observed in this period. Public officials were given monthly targets and were subject to disciplinary actions when they failed to fulfil them. The use of incentives and disincentives was not limited to the domestic level. International funders of the programme, such as the United States, used ‘food as leverage’ to shape India’s approach towards population control.Footnote 22
Sarah Hodges (2012) argues that, as a compelling model for manoeuvring reproductive behaviour towards national regeneration, eugenicsFootnote 23 played a crucial role in shaping the social and political debates in late colonial India. Rather than being concerned with questions such as heritability, Hodges shows, ‘eugenics in a poverty-stricken colonial context provided a powerful and enduring template for connecting reproductive behaviour to the task of revitalizing the nation as a whole’.Footnote 24 For its close association with the Holocaust, as Rao (2004) shows, eugenic ideas came to be widely discredited in the 1940s–50s.Footnote 25 At the same time, Neo-MalthusianismFootnote 26 gained prominence in the national and global discourses on population.Footnote 27 Population growth came to be viewed as a major constraint towards developmental goals by the political elites in the global South.Footnote 28 Eugenics, however, did not vanish but was transformed and incorporated into the more respectable domain of population control.Footnote 29 Hodges (2012) notes that many leaders associated with eugenics and birth control in late colonial India became active proponents of family planning and population control after independence. There were also continuities in terms of ideas, such as social engineering and regulating the reproductive behaviour of individuals.Footnote 30 While there exists a certain divergence between the early eugenicists promoting positive eugenics (facilitating procreation among the ‘fit’) and the Neo-Malthusians seeking to curb population growth in general, eugenics and neo-Malthusianism often overlap and co-exist.Footnote 31 The quantitative and qualitative problems of the population, together with their solutions, are considered both complementary and compatible.Footnote 32 In the debates on Paranjpye’s amendment, we come across such considerations.
This article draws on the legislative debates on the Maternity Benefit Act, particularly the discussion on the Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Bill of 1965. They are contextualized within the broader debates on maternity benefits and population control. An initial search in the digital repositories of the Indian Parliament helped us trace the debates on the Act and its subsequent amendments. Debates on all the government bills,Footnote 33 regardless of their enactment status, were collected. Population control narratives were prevalent throughout the 1960s to the 1990s and were much discussed during the debate on the Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Bill of 1965. The bill was introduced in the Rajya Sabha on 12 November 1965 and discussed on 26 and 27 July 1966. Paranjpye’s amendment was not part of the official bill, yet it triggered major debates among the members of the Parliament. They remained more focused on Paranjpye’s amendment rather than the official bill itself. Although Paranjpye’s amendment did not translate into law, these debates are worth exploring to understand how the concerns for population control impinged upon the legislative discourse on maternity benefits.
This article approaches legislative debates as a historical source for analysing political ideas in a given period. Several institutional and organizational factors, such as the ideological positions of the political parties, the status and seniority of the members, and the allocated time for different parties, shape the politics of speech-making in the Parliament and determine who gets to speak and on what aspects.Footnote 34 The social positionalities of the legislators also have a decisive role in their deliberations in the House.Footnote 35 While engaging with their speeches, we have been attentive to the social positionalities of the legislators, wherever possible.
This article is divided into five sections. The first section provides a historical account of the emergence of maternity benefit legislation in India. The second section discusses the nationalist underpinnings of the debates on maternity benefits. It demonstrates how the maternity benefit legislation was historically tied to the issue of infant and maternal health, and was often promoted for its role in reproducing healthy citizens for the nation. The third section examines the amendment proposed by Paranjpye and her advocacy for limiting maternity benefits. It situates her move within the debates on maternity benefits and population control in the period. To contextualize Paranjpye’s ideological position, this section also discusses her activities as a proponent of birth control. The fourth section examines the response to Paranjpye’s amendment in the Parliament. It also explores the perception of the legislators on the reproduction of the working class. The fifth section examines how the relationship between maternity benefits and population control was discussed over successive decades. It also locates limiting maternity benefits as a disincentive strategy for population control.
Situating the Maternity Benefit Act of 1961
As indicated earlier, legislative attempts for maternity benefits in India began only in the 1920s. The Maternity Protection Convention of 1919, adopted at the Washington Conference of the International Labour Organization (ILO), played a major role in these developments. The Convention mandated that a woman, irrespective of her age, nationality, or marital status, should be restricted from work for six weeks after the confinement. She would also have the right to leave before the confinement upon production of a medical certificate, provided it certifies that her confinement is due within six weeks. Furthermore, she should be paid sufficiently to care for herself and the child for the period of absence.Footnote 36 India was exempt from ratifying the Convention and was only asked to submit a report on women’s employment and existing maternity benefit provisions during that period. Accordingly, the government of India consulted provincial governments, employers’ associations, factory owners, and other stakeholders, and the findings were discussed in a conference held in Simla in 1921. At the conference, it was decided that a compulsory maternity benefit legislation in conformity with the Convention, covering women in both industrial and commercial undertakings, was not immediately possible. Inadequacy of the birth registration system, reluctance of women to visit male doctors and the limited availability of female medical practitioners were cited as reasons for the non-conduciveness in enacting such legislation. Until legislation were to become feasible, the government considered it enough to merely encourage the prevailing voluntary maternity benefit schemes by the ‘enlightened’ employers.Footnote 37
The growing concerns for labour welfare at the international level, as evidenced by the formation of the International Labour Organization and its adoption of the Maternity Protection Convention, led to the demand for maternity leave in various nationalist platforms.Footnote 38 The transfer of portfolios such as health to the Indian legislators after the introduction of dyarchy, and the alarming conditions of maternal and infant health in the industrial centres such as Bombay, further fuelled these demands.Footnote 39 The All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) included the demand for maternity leave in its charter in 1920.Footnote 40 In 1922, Kanji Dwarakadas attempted to introduce a proposal for maternity benefits in the Bombay Legislative Council.Footnote 41 In 1924, two separate attempts for maternity benefit legislation were made by S. K. Bole and N. M. Joshi.Footnote 42 Finally, it was R. S. Asavale’s attempts in 1928 that led to the first maternity benefit legislation in the country, in the form of the Bombay Maternity Benefit Act, 1929.Footnote 43 It was soon followed by the Central Provinces Maternity Benefit Act, 1930. This process gained momentum after the Royal Commission on Labour in India (1929–31) made explicit recommendations for the introduction of legislative measures to ensure compulsory maternity benefits for permanently employed women in the industrial sector.Footnote 44 The central government brought the Mines Maternity Benefit Act, 1941, for women workers in the mining sector. Maternity benefit legislation was also adopted in several other provinces, including Madras (1934), United Provinces (1938), Bengal (1939), Punjab (1943), and Assam (1944).Footnote 45
As Ahuja (2019) has shown, there was a surge in labour legislation in mid-twentieth-century India, particularly during the late 1940s to early 1950s, whether in the form of amalgamating existing laws or introducing new labour legislation. Several national and global factors, such as the impact of the Second World War on Indian industry, inflation-induced economic crises, heightened trade union activism, and changes in economic policy in the post-independence period that emphasized state-led heavy industries, contributed to these developments.Footnote 46 These laws, however, covered a tiny minority of the total workforce. Through their definitional categorization and exclusionary application, they constituted and reinforced the boundaries between the ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ sectors.Footnote 47 As Breman (1999) notes, they were more of a concession to the factory workers and the impending result of the state’s pioneering role in the economic transition.Footnote 48 Such legislative efforts were shaped by the idea that the ‘protection of industrial capital by a system of licences and controls should also be extended to labour by ensuring fair wages and an adequate life standard for industrial workers’.Footnote 49
The need for a scheme of social insurance covering various aspects of sickness, accidents, old age, and maternity benefits was widely discussed in the 1930s and 1940s.Footnote 50 The Employees’ State Insurance Act (ESI) was enacted in 1948. It provided insurance-based maternity benefits for women under a predefined wage limit in the non-seasonal factories. The Plantation Labour Act of 1951 also incorporated maternity benefit provisions for the women workers in the plantation sector. The legislation regulating maternity benefits so far was sector-specific (the Mines Maternity Benefit Act and the Plantation Labour Act), regional (the provincial laws for maternity benefits), or restrictive in terms of their application (the ESI Act covered workers under a predefined wage limit only in non-seasonal factories). They also varied in terms of their benefits. Thus, the demand continued for an all-India law for maternity benefits to bring uniformity and universality in the provisions of maternity benefits. In its Five Year Programme for Labour (1946), the interim government proposed a central law extending maternity benefits to workers in establishments other than factories.Footnote 51 In 1958, Renu Chakravartty from the Communist Party of India introduced a maternity benefit bill in the Parliament. The need to extend maternity benefits to women in white-collar jobs was one of its justifications.Footnote 52 The bill did not reach the stage of discussion and lapsed eventually.Footnote 53 The government introduced a bill in 1960, which led to the enactment of the Maternity Benefit Act, 1961. Whereas the Act immediately covered the factories, mines, and plantations, the decision to include other establishments—industrial, commercial, agricultural, or otherwise—was left to the state governments.Footnote 54 It provided up to 12 weeks of paid maternity leave, a medical bonus, and leave in the event of miscarriage, among other benefits.Footnote 55 The Act repealed the Mines Maternity Benefit Act and the relevant sections of the Plantation Labour Act. The employees covered by the ESI Act were, however, left outside of its purview.
Nevertheless, the Act was far from being ‘universal’. It did not automatically extend the benefits to women in other establishments. It set a threshold of a minimum of 160 days of employment in the preceding year.Footnote 56 Moreover, by adopting the definition of ‘factory’ from the Factories Act, it restricted its application to factories employing equal to or more than ten persons in mechanized factories and 20 persons in the case of non-mechanized factories. When the Act was extended to cover the shops and establishments in 1988, it set a threshold of ten or more employees for establishments to be covered under this Act.Footnote 57 Through these mechanisms, the Act retained certain exclusionary practices. The need to broaden the coverage of the Act, to include the workers in the ‘unorganized’ sector and particularly the agricultural workers within its purview, was raised several times in the Parliament. However, both the Maternity Benefit Act and the ESI Act focused on the formal workers in the ‘organized’ sector alone.Footnote 58 The demand for universalizing the benefits under the existing legislation, by broadening its coverage to include women in all sectors of employment, was not met. In the later period, the government introduced several schemes for providing maternity entitlements to women. However, they fall short in many aspects. While offering partial wage compensation, they remained conditional on adherence to certain principles, such as institutional delivery and a limited number of children. The monetary compensations provided under these schemes have been insufficient and lag in terms of their implementation.Footnote 59
In colonial India, men constituted the majority of the industrial workforce.Footnote 60 The participation of women was limited to certain sectors, such as plantations, cotton and jute mills, mining, and others. However, the proportion of women began to decline in most of these sectors since the late 1920s–1930s.Footnote 61 Although the advent of protective labour legislation, such as the prohibition of night work for women and maternity benefit legislation, is commonly held as the primary reason behind this decline, existing scholarship has shown that it was rather a complex phenomenon. By the time maternity benefit laws came into effect in most provinces, the proportion of women workers in the industrial sector had already begun to decline.Footnote 62 The retrenchment of women workers, which began in the late 1920s, reached its peak during the rationalization processes in the 1950s. Men were preferred over women based on the assumption that they had better skills and capacities to operate the new machinery at work.Footnote 63 Whereas the proportion of women in the ‘organized’ industrial sector was declining, urban, educated, middle-class women found an increasing presence in the public and service sector. Their participation was mostly limited to certain selected professions, such as teaching, medicine, clerical, and secretarial positions.Footnote 64 One of the reasons behind the demand for a central law was the need to extend the legal protection of maternity benefits to these new sections of women.
‘In the best interests of the nation’: Rationale for maternity benefits
The question of maternity benefits in India was intricately tied to the conditions of infant and maternal health. For the nationalist leaders, maternity benefits were a means to improve maternal and child health and to build a healthy and prosperous nation. These concerns occupied a central space during the ‘transition’.Footnote 65 What was expected of women in terms of their civic responsibilities and the promises towards them in return was a constant arena of negotiation. Women’s reproductive role, especially their role as mothers, was considered their primary contribution towards nation-building.Footnote 66 The WRPE report is an important testimony in this regard. It examined women’s social, economic, and legal status and wrote extensively on their work and contributions to national life. The Committee was quite radical in its approach. It did not confine women to their biological roles. Moreover, rather than imagining women as perpetual victims or targets of welfare services, it considered them as economic subjects integral to the national economy.Footnote 67 The Committee acknowledged the economic value of unpaid housework and unravelled the constraints women encounter in securing gainful employment. It argued that childcare responsibilities, excessive housework, and a lack of skills impeded women’s prospects of employment. While demanding ‘equal status and opportunity’ for women, the Committee, however, did not intend to make her unfit for ‘the great tasks of motherhood and nation-building’.Footnote 68 It attempted to balance women’s child-rearing work and outside employment, highlighting the contribution of motherhood towards the national economy and development. It recommended creches for all mothers, regardless of their employment status, and social insurance policies for maternity benefits.
The Committee seemed to adopt what Sarah Hodges (2012) termed ‘maternalist eugenics’Footnote 69 while advocating for the reproductive health of women. It demanded special protection for women as they are the ‘mother[s] of the race’.Footnote 70 The Committee argued that the health of the mother directly impacted her child’s health. Thus, if the health of the race/nation had to be ensured, the mother’s health should be deemed important.Footnote 71 Along with its emphasis on women’s health, the Committee also devised certain other strategies, such as prohibiting reproduction of persons with serious diseases, to ensure a ‘physically and mentally healthy race’.Footnote 72 Later in the report, when it expressed the ‘eugenic point of view’, the Committee elaborated on concerns about the deteriorating quality of the population and emphasized that ‘the right kind of persons marry’, as well as the importance of knowledge and practice of birth control, along with the health of children.Footnote 73
The Health Survey and Development Committee (popularly known as the Bhore Committee) was constituted in 1943 to examine the existing health conditions and to provide recommendations for future developments of health administration in the country. It recognized the alarming rate of maternal and infant mortalityFootnote 74 and stated that measures for alleviating the existing maternal and child health conditions should be given the highest priority in the programme for health development in the country.Footnote 75 The committee argued that the health of the child and the mother were so closely intertwined that they were almost inseparable, necessitating a unified approach to their health.Footnote 76
The committee further assessed the conditions of women in industrial employment. It discussed the provision of nurseries available in industrialized countries, such as the Soviet Union, and recommended similar measures in the Indian context. Apart from relieving the mother and caring for the child while she works, the committee held that the nurseries could also impart necessary education for the mothers and the children to maximize their proper development. In the nurseries, mothers could learn ‘how to feed, dress and take care of [their] child properly’.Footnote 77 Such education in ‘mother-craft’Footnote 78 was considered necessary not merely for taking care of her present child, but also to help bring up her future children.Footnote 79 The Committee was not satisfied with the existing provincial maternity benefit laws and recommended maternity benefits along the lines of the Maternity Protection Convention. Attaching great importance to maternity benefits, the committee further noted that they had implications for the health of both the mother and the child. In the context of India, where maternal as well as infant mortality were so high, it was even more relevant.Footnote 80
The idea that women’s reproductive role, especially their function as mothers, had immense significance in shaping future citizens has remained a major rationale for maternity benefits in the subsequent decades. During the discussion on the Maternity Benefit Bill 1960, one of the legislators remarked:
When children are born, it is the nation, factually speaking, that is born. It is not that a whole nation gets dropped from the skies.Footnote 81
However, most mothers to whom this gigantic task was assigned were not doing well in terms of their physical health. The poor maternal and child health conditions were a constant source of concern. While maternal and infant mortality had gradually declined over the decades, with maternal mortality reducing from 20 per thousand live births in 1946 to ten per thousand in 1959 and infant mortality from 165 to 135 per thousand live births over the same period, it was still quite high.Footnote 82 In this context, maternity benefits were regarded as crucial for ensuring their health. The issue of maternal health in developing countries garnered global attention in the 1980s, following community studies on maternal mortality supported by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).Footnote 83 Although the condition of maternal health has significantly improved in higher-income countries, these studies have revealed the enormity of the problem in developing countries.Footnote 84 Based on the available statistics, the WHO estimated that ‘half a million maternal deaths were occurring each year, ninety-nine per cent of them in developing countries’.Footnote 85 The global Safe Motherhood Initiative was launched in 1987. Accordingly, India adopted the Child Survival and Safe Motherhood Programme in 1992. Demanding the extension of the maternity benefit coverage to women from all employment sectors, Bibha Ghosh Goswami from the Communist Party of India (Marxist), defined maternity benefit as ‘a right to motherhood’. Considering the state of maternal health in the country, she viewed motherhood as a national responsibility.Footnote 86 Whereas Goswami treated maternal health as an end in itself, the prevailing idea among many legislators was that the real importance of maternal health and maternity benefits lay in ensuring the health of the newborn. ‘Maternity benefit is principally for the benefit of the child’, Shibban Lal Saksena, a member of parliament, held while arguing that it should not be denied on the grounds of misconduct of the woman.Footnote 87 The health of the children was then linked to the health of the nation, that ‘a nation will be healthy if its children are healthy’,Footnote 88 strengthening the case for maternity benefits. Providing maternity benefits was considered to be ‘in the best interests of the nation’.Footnote 89 Such approaches towards maternity benefits continued in the later decades. While discussing the Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Bill of 2016, Sushmita DevFootnote 90 identified the rationale for maternity benefits in caring for and supporting pregnant and lactating women, as the health and strength of future generations are directly influenced by these conditions.Footnote 91 While the role of maternal health in determining the health of the newborn is widely acknowledged, maternal and infant health are also important on their own. Maternal health does not have to draw its justifications solely from its relationship with infant health, nor infant health from the goal of national development.
Maternity benefits and population control
By the 1960s, the maternity benefit policy was also increasingly questioned for leading to more births and derailing the national family planning programme. The need to limit maternity benefits in pursuit of population control goals was widely discussed on various platforms. Limiting maternity benefits as a disincentive strategy was suggested by some members in the Health Survey and Planning Committee (1959–61). In 1964, ‘rationalizing’ maternity benefits by reducing their coverage after the third child to induce industrial workers to family planning was among the many agendas for discussion in the Central Family Planning Board.Footnote 92 Similar concerns were raised in the Central Family Planning Council in 1967, where several members advocated for reducing maternity benefits and children’s allowances as they ‘acted as incentives for having more children’.Footnote 93
Population concerns, however, were not peculiar to maternity benefits. The attempts to decriminalize abortion and to raise the age of marriage in the 1960s and 70s had a similar orientation. Perceived as ‘a technology of family planning’, Sreenivas argues, abortion was expected to contribute towards both the qualitative as well as quantitative goals of population control.Footnote 94 The amendment to the Child Marriage Restraint Act in 1978, which raised the minimum age of marriage for girls to 18 and boys to 21 years, was equally rooted in demographic concerns. Since the 1960s, delaying marriage came to be popularized as a means to reduce the birth rate.Footnote 95 Embedded in the logic of regulating life for the overall health of the nation,Footnote 96 it shared similarities with both the efforts to legalize abortion and limit maternity benefits. The interests of the nation were brought to the fore as the dominant narrative in legitimizing all three endeavours.
The alleged threat that the maternity benefit policy posed to the nation also garnered some public attention. In Times of India, a leading English daily, we come across many such publications—often in the form of ‘letters to the editor’. Treating it as a matter of urgency, they often questioned the government’s approach towards tackling the population problem. Allowances such as maternity benefits were often cited as factors demotivating family planning among industrial workers.Footnote 97 It was often argued that the maternity benefit policy was inconsistent with population control goals,Footnote 98 and the government was asked to amend the Maternity Benefit Act.Footnote 99 In one such letter, K. H. Antia, a reader from Okhamandal, went to great lengths to discuss the seemingly contradictory approaches of the government, spending a considerable amount promoting family planning while simultaneously providing various allowances, such as maternity benefits, to industrial workers. Antia argued that these allowances were becoming incentives for ‘limitless family growth’. It was then cautioned to monitor these allowances so that they would not become ‘an aid for fathering weaklings’ for the industrial workers.Footnote 100 Here, we can see that the industrial workers were not only identified as responsible for the population growth, but their offspring were also subject to qualitative assessment. Their worthlessness was proclaimed long before they were even born.
During the discussion on the Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Bill in 1966,Footnote 101 Shakuntala Paranjpye attempted to introduce a provision limiting maternity benefits.Footnote 102 The provision stated that ‘no woman shall be entitled to the payment of maternity benefits after the first two deliveries’.Footnote 103 It was aimed at regulating the reproductive behaviour of the working-class women who allegedly produced more children just to avail the benefits. Drawing an explicit connection between maternity benefits and the urge to have more children, Paranjpye held:
Does a woman worker go in for a child because of the benefits? I say “yes”.Footnote 104
She grounded her claim on her decades of experience advocating birth control and held that working-class women did not want to opt for the birth control methods, as they did not want to lose the money from maternity benefits. When Arjun Arora from the Indian National Congress contradicted her claim by arguing that women could earn more money if they were not on maternity leave but in active employment,Footnote 105 Paranjpye responded that women would also get ‘rest’Footnote 106 during the period of maternity leave, which they would not otherwise.Footnote 107
Paranjpye argued that the existing population far exceeded the sustainable limits in the country. The amendment was necessary for securing food, employment, and overall progress. The mill chawls were already overcrowded, leaving no room for further children. In her view, it was to the benefit of the families—‘to be happy and to live in a healthy manner’.Footnote 108 ‘Rather than having child after child like rabbits, which they are not able to look after’, Paranjpye claimed that the amendment would enable them to rear the first two children in a better condition.Footnote 109 Moreover, considering that childrearing is an excruciating task, it was beneficial for the women themselves to limit their children.Footnote 110
Paranjpye claimed that she wanted people from all sections to undergo these limitations, not just the working classes. Her amendment and the overall approach towards the reproduction of the working class, however, reflect otherwise. Based on the disdain for the reproductive behaviour of working-class women, Paranjpye advocated her amendment. She equated maternity benefits with a ‘freeship’, the kind of help that had to be withdrawn for dissatisfactory performance or ‘irresponsible’ behaviour. However, Paranjpye’s approach to maternity benefits as a mechanism equated to a ‘freeship’ was inherently problematic. Unlike a freeship, which is usually viewed as a benevolent provision offered to the needy upon fulfilment of certain criteria, maternity benefit is a hard-won right for the employed women. It is constitutive of their dignified survival. They are not meant to be conditional on other grounds, let alone the number of children.
It is essential to examine Paranjpye’s profile to understand the amendment and her overall views on population control. She was born into an influential Brahmin family. Her father, R. P. Paranjpye, served as Indian High Commissioner to Australia in the 1940s. She studied mathematics at Newnham College, Cambridge and received a diploma in Education from the University of London. Later she joined her relative Raghunath Dhondo Karve to promote birth control in Maharashtra since the 1930s. She was also associated with Samaj Swasthya, a periodical published by Karve, which sought to address the questions of sexual health and birth control. For her contributions towards family planning, she was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 1991, the third-highest civilian award in India.Footnote 111
Paranjpye also introduced the Sterilization of the Unfit Bill, intending to prohibit the mentally and physically ‘unfit’ population (especially people suffering from leprosy and tuberculosis) from procreation. Deploying a eugenic rationale, she argued that while the healthy population undertook family planning, the unhealthy and the diseased sections continued to reproduce indiscriminately. If not restricted, she held, this would result in a scenario where the ‘quality of our community of our society, will be going down year by year, generation by generation’.Footnote 112 To restrict the reproduction of these diseased individuals, Paranjpye mentioned two methods: institutional segregation and sterilization. She argued that institutional segregation was not practically enforceable due to the limited resources. This left them with the only option, sterilization. To support her attempt to sterilize the mentally unwell, Paranjpye extensively cited medical literature on psychiatric patients and sought to ascertain their differential fertility, that they reproduced way more than the rest of the population. While there were previous attempts to enforce sterilization on the diseased population,Footnote 113 these were heavily criticized for violating the Fundamental Rights. Paranjpye, therefore, drew her justifications from the promises of public health, social good, and improving the quality of the population.Footnote 114 In her writings, Paranjpye often elaborated on the dangers of unrestricted reproduction of mentally and physically compromised individuals and advocated for their sterilization.Footnote 115 But her advocacy did not end with the physically and mentally compromised alone. She also proposed the compulsory sterilization of the beggar population. In her view, it was a means to tackle the beggar problem, as once introduced, it would result in many abandoning the profession.Footnote 116 The case of beggars (read as the poor) is crucial here to understand Paranjpye’s position on the reproduction of the working class and the attempt to limit maternity benefits.
To the elite advocates of birth control in colonial India, the reproductive practices of certain social sections posed a significant problem. National well-being was linked to sexual practices, Ahluwalia (2008) shows, which necessitated ‘a strict surveillance of reproductive functions, particularly of those represented as undesirable national citizens—the working class, lower castes, and, in some instances, Muslims’.Footnote 117 The National Planning Committee’s sub-committee on Population (also known as the Radhakamal Mukherjee Committee, after its chairperson) was equally apprehensive about the quality of the population and emphasized the urgency of preventing its racial deterioration. The Committee marked the demographic growth among the ‘backward sections’ of society, who were ‘more fertile but less intellectual’, together with their comparably lower survival rate in the long run. The concern about the ‘gradual predominance of the inferior social strata’, in addition to the decay of the ‘upper caste Hindus’, led the Committee to suggest some measures for averting the ‘mispopulation’. It emphasized circulating the knowledge of birth control among the masses for preventing such racial deterioration.Footnote 118 In its ‘eugenic programme’, the committee further suggested ‘affording a basis for a better widow re-marriage and the abolition of hypergamy, dowry and bride purchase for the ‘upper Hindu castes’.Footnote 119 Additionally, it also suggested preventing the reproduction of ‘those who suffer from certain obvious mental defects or diseases among which should be included insanity, feeble mindedness and epilepsy’.Footnote 120 When the Mukherjee Committee’s report was presented to the National Planning Committee (NPC) in 1940, the latter passed several resolutions in response. It concurred with the view that regulating population growth and improving its quality were necessary. It also upheld some measures, such as the promotion of intermarriage and the sterilization of persons suffering from diseases like epilepsy and insanity for eugenic reasons. However, for the NPC, the remedy to the population problem remained tied mainly to economic development.Footnote 121
‘Built-in-insurance for the working family’? Maternity benefits and the reproduction of the working class
The amendment brought by Paranjpye led to much speculation and apprehension from the members. It fuelled the conversation on the relationship between maternity benefits and population growth, even before the clause was formally introduced. While many legislators supported her demand on the grounds of the urgent need to counter the population problem,Footnote 122 others vehemently questioned the amendment as ‘punitive and embarrassing’,Footnote 123 ‘discriminatory’,Footnote 124 and ‘reactionary’Footnote 125. Like Paranjpye, several other legislators were convinced that maternity benefits persuaded working-class women to produce more children. Regardless of their opinion on whether limiting maternity benefits was necessary, legislators shared parallel views on the imminent threat posed by the growing population and the importance of family planning. It was also commonly held that the working class indulged in indiscriminate reproduction and was responsible for the population growth. To some legislators, it was due to the absence of education and thus a lack of awareness about the methods of birth control. Some others went on to argue that the working class reproduced more children because they had no other means for recreation. Unlimited maternity benefits only exacerbated this issue, as it was alleged that they served as an insurance to continue that practice. The various positions on Paranjpye’s amendment and how they unveiled the prevailing ideologies and biases regarding the reproduction and sexuality of working-class women are discussed in the following sections.
The support that Paranjpye garnered was mainly based on the apprehension of the imminent ‘population explosion’. It was looming large for many legislators, demanding urgent and undivided attention. The policy of maternity benefits was considered detrimental to the successful implementation of the family planning programme. Legislators highlighted the government’s substantial investment in the family planning programme, and how such a ‘novel’ project would be wasted due to another of its policies that simultaneously induced the working class to procreate. Lokanath Misra,Footnote 126 pointed out the alleged incongruity between the policies of maternity benefits and population control. Unlimited maternity benefits, he argued, were a ‘definite encouragement, to produce more children’.Footnote 127 Distinguishing between the taxpayers who funded the family planning programme and the people who resorted to indiscriminate reproduction, Misra emphasized the need for limiting maternity benefits. On a similar note, T. V. Anandan from the Indian National Congress argued that limiting maternity benefits would lead to fewer children, as working women would know that these benefits would no longer be provided after a certain number of deliveries.Footnote 128 Sripati Chandrasekhar was a notable figure in this regard, who ardently supported Paranjpye’s move. Chandrasekhar established himself as a leading demographer internationally with his numerous texts on the population question and founded the Indian Institute of Population Studies in 1950. He was also elected as Honorary Fellow by the Eugenics Society in 1954.Footnote 129 He would soon become the Union Minister of Health and Family Planning in Indira Gandhi’s government.Footnote 130 During his tenure (1967–71), Chandrasekhar advocated compulsory sterilization for men with three or more children.Footnote 131 In 1969, he also promoted the government plan for clubbing together the services at maternity hospitals and birth control methods such as tubectomy and the loop.Footnote 132 It comes as no surprise that Chandrasekhar termed maternity benefits as ‘a built-in-insurance for the working family’, which led them to reproduce children after children.Footnote 133 Limiting maternity benefits would assist the working classes, as in his view, it would be a ‘positive burden on the family’, leading to the adoption of family planning measures. Chandrasekhar argued:
They will go to cinemas. They will drink tea and play ping pong and enjoy and take part in the various other entertainments and not resort only to this one biological entertainment.Footnote 134
It is worth noting that the idea of limiting maternity benefits for population control gained widespread support among women legislators. Phulrenu Guha, who had a history of trade union activism among the dock workers in Bengal before joining the Congress,Footnote 135 was no exception. Although Guha refrained from commenting on whether working-class women took advantage of maternity benefits or not, she urged reconsideration of maternity benefits in line with family planning.Footnote 136 Tara Ramchandra Sathe discussed the difficulties pregnant women encountered if they had to engage in arduous work. She recognized the significance of maternity benefits for women. However, the ‘growing population problem’ was more important to her. Sathe took immense pride in her role in the birth control movement and supported Paranjpye’s amendment. She elaborated on why such a move would be beneficial to the overall population and how it would also be in the best interests of women. ‘A woman or a family is not at all happy to have more children’, Sathe claimed, as it was a very arduous job.Footnote 137 Concerns about the growing population were also prominent in Mangla Devi Talwar. Talwar, a medical practitioner, highlighted the rate of population growth and how this could pose challenges in meeting the basic needs of the people. She insisted that while there have been widespread efforts to educate the public on the ideals of population control, there was no reason not to include the women workers in this endeavour. However, Talwar suggested some changes to the proposed amendment. In her opinion, maternity benefits should be limited to three children, and the rest should be considered upon medical and other grounds.Footnote 138
The major narrative in support of Paranjpye’s amendment had been developmentalist in nature, as it was considered a move that would lead to population control and thus ensure national progress. Women legislators such as Sathe, however, added another dimension to this discussion. She emphasized the arduous nature of motherhood and claimed that the amendment, as a motivator for family planning, would be beneficial for women themselves. A historical revisit would bring to our notice that while there existed a small yet powerful call for autonomy and emancipation for women,Footnote 139 these ideals were hardly embodied in the dominant discourse on birth control in India.Footnote 140 Birth control, often espoused as a mechanism essentially serving the interests of women, was rather incorporated into an elitist agenda that limited women’s control over reproduction.Footnote 141 In this context, women from the marginalized social sections, such as the working-class or subordinated caste women, were identified as the main target of contraceptive measures, transforming their bodies into battlegrounds for control.Footnote 142
The family planning interventions in the mid-twentieth century, as undertaken in developing countries, were driven more by concerns about ‘overpopulation’ than by the welfare of women.Footnote 143 Furthermore, in contrast to the elite advocates who propagated the idea that more children create and worsen poverty, existing works show that the perception and experience of reproduction could vary depending on one’s social location. Children were not necessarily considered burdens but were often perceived as a source of future economic support by the poor. The deplorable condition of infant and child health also necessitated more births, as there was no guarantee of their future survival.Footnote 144 Moreover, the way modern contraceptives were deployed to poor women in developing countries without proper knowledge of such measures was equally disputable.Footnote 145 Scholars have also demonstrated that contraception alone is not sufficient to facilitate freedom, considering that reproductive decisions are not always in the control of women.Footnote 146 In such a scenario, denying maternity benefits to women based on the number of children they had for regulating their reproductive behaviour was highly troublesome. The right to maternity benefits, paramount to their dignified survival, should never have been attempted to be made conditional.
Paranjpye’s amendment was also contested on many grounds. It was considered to be in conflict with the constitutional provisions. A. P. Chatterjee from the Communist Party of India (Marxist) held that the amendment contradicted the Directive Principles, mainly Article 42, which guided the state to ‘make provisions for just and humane conditions of work and for maternity relief’. Therefore, Chatterjee argued, the legislature did not have the right to consider her amendment.Footnote 147 He also insisted that population control should not be imposed from above. In his view, the medium of education and raising the living standards of the poor could be more effective in that context.Footnote 148 Moreover, maternity benefit was also viewed as a sickness benefit, addressing the medical needs of women during pregnancy and childbirth, and to deprive them of such benefits was considered to be ‘unjust and cruel’.Footnote 149 Legislators also argued that Paranjpye’s amendment would lead to a disruption in the family life and penalize the working-class woman for something that she was not entirely responsible for.Footnote 150 Pushpaben Janardanrai Mehta from the Indian National Congress, the only woman member who stood against Paranjpye, questioned the very attempt to combine maternity benefits and family planning. Mehta, known for her social work for women and children in Gujarat, pointed out the implications of such a move against the health and employment of working-class women. She held that limiting maternity benefits to a few births would lead to an increase in cases of miscarriage and abortion. She argued that the loss of financial support during pregnancy would also make their lives increasingly difficult. One should not worsen the already struggling lives of working-class women, Mehta insisted. Furthermore, she emphasized that the responsibility of family planning was social and should not be imposed solely upon women.Footnote 151
The attempts to establish the idea that maternity benefits were contradictory to population control and thus interfered with the successful implementation of the family planning programme so far were mostly limited to individual efforts.Footnote 152 Shah Nawaz Khan, the Deputy Minister of Labour, Employment and Rehabilitation, categorically denied any association between maternity benefits and population growth. He stated that as far as his Ministry was concerned, ‘there is absolutely no conflict between providing maternity benefits to lady workers and family planning’. He also mentioned that a similar attempt during the 1960 Bill was already dismissed. Khan further disapproved of Paranjpye and others’ attempts for limiting maternity benefits and instead argued for alternative options, such as education.Footnote 153
However, while examining the various positions of legislators on the amendment, one must look beyond their immediate support or opposition. There were also certain commonalities among the legislators, which often went beyond their particular stance on the proposed amendment and their political affiliations. It was widely believed that population growth could pose serious problems to the nation. Based on the fear of ‘overpopulation’, Lokanath Misra demanded that maternity benefits should not be available after a few children.Footnote 154 Mangladevi Talwar argued that if the population continued to grow at the prevailing rate, it would be difficult to fulfil the basic needs such as food, shelter, and medical facilities.Footnote 155 Legislators agreed that there was a need to adopt various methods to address this issue. Adopting restrictive measures, such as limiting maternity benefits and imposing taxation, was favoured by some legislators. Some others emphasized the role of education, raising the living standards, and promoting awareness through various means, including radio, posters, and seminars. The notion that the working classes had a major role in the population growth was also widely prevalent. Poverty, lack of education, lack of awareness about contraceptive methods, and most importantly, their unrestrained sexuality, were cited as explanations. Despite being a vocal opponent of Paranjpye’s amendment, M.N. Govindam Nair from the Communist Party of India, remarked:
The root of the matter is that the standard of life of our people is so low, especially of the working people, the lower strata of the people, that their only recreation or diversion is to produce children. When that position changes, when there are other amenities for sublimation or for diversion, then this problem will not arise.Footnote 156
On a similar note to Nair, Sheel Bhadra Yajee from the Indian National Congress held that whereas the bourgeoisie had many modes for recreation, such as cinema and music, the working class had only one pleasure, which was procreation.Footnote 157 Regardless of their position on Paranjpye’s amendment, the contempt towards the working-class population and their sexual lives was widespread among the legislators.
The political leadership in the mid-twentieth century was predominantly from the dominant castes and classes, as evidenced by the social composition of the leadership in Congress and a commonality among legislators who participated in debates in the 1960s.Footnote 158 This perhaps explains the prevalence of bias against the working class among legislators across the political spectrum. The existing scholarship demonstrates that caste played a pivotal role in both the early recruitment of factory workers and in determining their job hierarchies. A large section of industrial workers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was drawn from socially marginalized sections, such as the landless and subordinated castes. Moreover, when employed, the dominant castes were found to be more prevalent in upper job echelons, while the subordinated castes were often relegated to low-paying jobs.Footnote 159 The employment of women in industries was generally lower. Moreover, when employed, they were often confined to low-paying jobs and lacked opportunities for upward mobility.Footnote 160 Women usually entered the labour market after ‘they had exhausted other alternatives’ in conditions like the absence or insufficiency of male earnings in the family, and when forced by other factors such as widowhood or desertion.Footnote 161 For the dominant caste women, there was an added normative layer of seclusion and domesticity. Considered paramount in maintaining their elevated social position, these norms further acted towards disfavouring outside work for them.Footnote 162 As large-scale mechanized industries in post-independence India had witnessed the flow of the urban, educated sections, the National Commission on Labour (1966–69) expressed great hope for transforming the social composition of labour. However, this change was slower in the traditional sectors.Footnote 163 Thus, despite legislators mostly using categories such as ‘working-class’ ‘working family’, or ‘working woman’, the interlinkage and overlap of class and caste compel us to consider that caste may have equally underpinned their overall perceptions.
As noted earlier, the proportion of women in industrial employment witnessed a considerable decline, particularly after the rationalization in the 1950s. It coincided with the increasing presence of urban, educated, and middle-class women in public and service sectors. However, despite ongoing demands, the Maternity Benefit Act did not automatically provide maternity benefits to women in these sectors. While discussing the Maternity Benefit Bill (1960), legislators highlighted the ongoing economic changes and demanded that the proposed legislation should be directly applicable to women in all other establishments, such as teachers, nurses, telephone operators, and so on. They argued that leaving that decision to the states would create further problems, given the possible opposition from employers.Footnote 164 Their demand, however, was not addressed. To add to that, when Paranjpye’s amendment was discussed, the Act had not yet been fully operative across India. While in the case of the mining sector, the Act came into effect in 1963, its implementation in other sectors was gradually carried out in a phased manner, state by state. For instance, the Act was not operative in the state of Tamil Nadu (erstwhile Madras) until 1967.Footnote 165 It will only be with further research that we will know whether or when the states themselves took any action to include other establishments within the ambit of the Act. The central Act was amended in 1973 to cover the establishments engaged in the ‘exhibition of equestrian, acrobatic and other performances’. It extended its coverage to employees in shops and establishments only in 1988.Footnote 166 This perhaps illustrates why the discussion on the amendment mainly revolved around the working-class women.
By the mid-1960s, the ESI had attained considerable reach in most industrial centres in the country.Footnote 167 Highlighting these developments, Banka Behari Das argued that Paranjpye’s amendment could never serve its actual purpose even if it were adopted. In the changing context, most of the women workers would be covered under the former, and the scope of the Maternity Benefit Act would be limited. Das also argued that the amendment discriminated against working-class women (who were the primary beneficiaries under the Act), while educated women in government services faced no such limitation under the existing rules. Whereas many of his contemporaries were solely concerned about the reproduction of the working class, Das highlighted that ‘most of the doctors in every district, or those who are in charge of population control, have more than half a dozen children’.Footnote 168 Nevertheless, these concerns were not carried further into the discussion. Instead, legislators indulged in endless debates on the indiscriminate reproduction and the perceived ignorance of the working-class women. The age-old biases about the working class that had historically prevailed among the social elites found a new expression. Maternity benefits became just another site for vilifying their reproduction.
In the context of colonial Bengal, Sen argues that working-class women were often marked as sexually deviant and morally corrupt, prone to ‘prostitution’ and involved in ‘temporary’ marriages. Working classes were infamous for their sexual promiscuity, which constantly threatened the elite norms about the ‘ideal’ family. To some of the elites, this resulted from their socio-economic destitution. Others believed that immorality was deeply ingrained in them.Footnote 169 Chhachhi demonstrates that during the discussion on the Bombay Maternity Benefit Bill introduced by Asavale in the late 1920s, the working classes were associated with the phenomenon of overpopulation. It was held that ‘they were prolific reproducers’ who produced ‘a baby every year’. The assumption that maternity benefits would lead to adultery and overpopulation was one of the grounds on which the bill was opposed.Footnote 170 In the middle-class discourse on birth control, the working classes were stereotypically portrayed as ‘sexually irresponsible subjects’ who brought poverty upon themselves through their reproductive practices.Footnote 171
Such conceptions continued in the 1960s. While accusing the working classes of producing more children, legislators argued that they resorted to unrestrained reproduction because they had no other ‘entertainment’ in their lives. When provided unrestricted maternity benefits, they availed of ‘a built-in-insurance’ to continue that practice. Ignorant and irresponsible, Bhadram argued, they had to be handled by the ‘enlightened’ legislators.Footnote 172 This handling often entailed a paternalistic attitude, through which legislators justified their advocacy for limiting the benefits. Furthermore, such attempts were also based on their presumed epistemic superiority and the perceived incomprehensibility of working-class women.Footnote 173
As a disincentive strategy: Limiting maternity benefits for population control
While the use of incentives and disincentives to promote population control gained momentum during the Emergency period, scholars have shown that they were already in practice during the Second Five-Year Plan (1956–61).Footnote 174 The Health Survey and Planning Committee (also known as the Mudaliar Committee) was crucial in this context.Footnote 175 The Committee observed a gradual decline in infant and maternal mortality and a decrease in deaths resulting from diseases such as cholera and smallpox. It opined that the overall decline in the death rate in the absence of a corresponding decrease in the birth rate resulted in population growth in India.Footnote 176 Stating the urgency of regulating population growth at the earliest possible time, it emphasized the need for ‘a many-sided attack on the problem’.Footnote 177 The Committee expressed its concern about malnutrition among mothers and children, delegating the task of supervising their feeding to the maternity and child services.Footnote 178 Simultaneously, it also opined that propagating education about family planning should be a core function of such centres.Footnote 179 Creating autonomous bodies for monitoring the family planning programme, conducting demographic studies to facilitate region-specific goals and methods, promoting domestic production of contraceptives, and utilizing education and media platforms to disseminate information were among its major recommendations. Considering the population problem as of paramount importance to the country, some of its members went on to advocate certain stringent legislative and administrative measures to undertake if there was no significant decline in the next few years. They proposed the introduction of taxation for people from the fourth pregnancy onwards, the removal of existing disadvantages in the income-tax policies for unmarried persons as a reward for their contribution to solving the population problem, restrictions in availing the free services offered by the government such as that of free education to the families having more than three children, non-availability of maternity benefits to women showing non-adherence to the family planning norms, and so on.Footnote 180 Envisioning the strategic use of maternity benefits as a deterrent in achieving the goals of population control, they wrote:
The grant of maternity benefits to women employees in the services of governments and local bodies and of private schools and other institutions receiving grants from public funds should be limited to the first three pregnancies of each such employee. A withdrawal of this benefit from subsequent periods of pregnancy and confinement will undoubtedly have some value as a deterrent.Footnote 181
The use of financial incentives and disincentives received more attention in the later period, particularly when the practice of various contraceptive methods imposed by the government, such as the IUDs, was met with intense criticism, and the rate of people undergoing these procedures started to decline drastically by the late 1960s.Footnote 182 The amount of financial incentives was increased, and facilities, such as free fertilizers and the allotment of land to people undergoing these procedures, were being deployed by public officials to achieve their targets.Footnote 183 The use of disincentives also became prominent from this time. Scholars have noted that several state governments, including those of Kerala, Mysore, and Maharashtra, started denying maternity leave to government employees with more than three children.Footnote 184 Such attempts, however, did not go uncontested. In January 1969, the Bombay Municipal Corporation issued a circular stating its plan to deny maternity leave to its employees having three or more children. This move, proposed in accordance with the government’s family planning goals, received severe opposition from the employees’ unions. Upon receiving a strike notice, the corporation had to opt for conciliation.Footnote 185
The presumed incongruity between the policy of maternity benefits and population control continued to be raised in Parliament in the years following Paranjpye’s amendment. Demands were made to limit maternity benefits to certain deliveries,and better coordination between the Ministry of Health and Family Planning and the Ministry of Labour was sought during the discussion on the Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Bill, 1976.Footnote 186 The issue gained much prominence in the 1980s, when the Fourth Central Pay Commission recommended that maternity benefits should not be made available to women who had more than two children.Footnote 187 During the discussion on the Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Bill, 1988, legislators made numerous references to the disincentive effect of limiting maternity benefits. The Pay Commission’s impact on maternity benefit policies in states such as Odisha and Punjab was criticised by some legislators, who considered such measures inhuman and coercive. In its place, they emphasized the adoption of persuasive methods, such as promoting education and raising public awareness.Footnote 188 However, the fear of an imminent population explosion was also present. While some members urged reducing the duration of maternity leave after two children instead of its complete withdrawal,Footnote 189 others suggested deploying limited maternity benefits as a ‘dis-incentive’, as a deterrent to population growth.Footnote 190 The relationship between maternity benefits and population control came to be debated again during the discussion on the Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Bill of 1995; this time, however, in response to the government’s inclination to strategically use maternity benefits for promoting tubectomy and abortion. The bill sought to extend maternity benefits for women undergoing medical termination of pregnancy and tubectomy, and any illness arising out of these procedures.Footnote 191 The bill was essentially brought to promote family planning norms among working women.Footnote 192 The practices of abortion as well as tubectomy were approached as mechanisms for regulating the growing population. Whereas previous attempts aimed to reduce maternity benefits as a disincentive strategy, this time, maternity benefits were deployed to promote population control.
While examining the conceptualization of poverty within the family planning discourse in India, Sur (2017) argues that whereas the practices of reproductive sexuality were considered respectable overall, they were looked down upon in the cases of the poor. Creating binaries of ‘worthy’ and ‘unworthy’ poor, the system of incentives and disincentives awarded the ‘worthy’ poor who complied with the state policies and punished the ‘unworthy’ poor who deviated from these. In her view, disincentives, which were often framed in the language of morality, were used to discipline the deviants of birth control and punish their bodies. Working-class sexuality was considered deviant and excessive, legitimizing their punitive regulation by disincentives.Footnote 193 While incentives and disincentives were claimed to be voluntary, in a country such as India, marked by its widescale poverty and caste hierarchy, they were inherently coercive.Footnote 194 Maternity benefits, which are so fundamental to ensure equality and justice for women in the workplace, when used as a disincentive strategy, could further jeopardize their employment opportunities.
Conclusions
Ensuring maternal and infant health and promoting the reproduction of healthy citizens was a major rationale for maternity benefit legislation in India. However, the discourse on maternity benefits, especially in the mid-1960s, became equally burdened with the concern for ‘overpopulation’. The population belonging to the ‘lower social strata’, such as the working class, were marked as prolific reproducers and the major defaulters of the family planning programme. They were portrayed as a symbol of fecundity, whose only pleasure rested on indiscriminate reproduction. Maternity benefits were then viewed as a further inducement to these practices. Remedial measures were sought in introducing limits on the availability of maternity benefits. Based on neo-Malthusian and eugenic logic, Paranjpye’s amendment sought to regulate the reproductive behaviour of the working class. It was argued that the amendment would help curb population growth and ensure economic needs are met, as well as that public services are available. At the same time, legislators also claimed that it would enable the working class to raise their first two children in a better condition instead of indiscriminately reproducing children like ‘rabbits’ which they could not properly look after or provide them with education. Thus, the amendment was advocated as a measure leading towards a limited and ‘quality’ population.
Since the late twentieth century, there has been a gradual shift towards reproductive health in the family planning programme.Footnote 195 Simultaneously, issues of maternal and infant health had gained prominence in the debates on maternity benefits. A major rationale for the 2017 amendment to the Act, which extended the maternity leave period up to 26 weeks, was the emphasis on exclusive breastfeeding and its long-term significance for the child’s health. In the legislative debates on maternity benefits, population control no longer received the same level of attention it had in the mid-1960s. When a restrictive clause was added to the Act limiting the maximum permissible leave period to 12 weeks for women with two or more surviving children,Footnote 196 it largely went unnoticed.Footnote 197
Acknowledgements
The authors acknowledge the critical and constructive comments received from the anonymous reviewers, which greatly helped in improving the article. They are also indebted to Arupjyoti Saikia and Daksha Parmar for their valuable suggestions and feedback. The British Academy Writing Workshop ‘Colonial and Post-colonial History’, held during 2021–22, significantly helped in writing this article. Earlier versions of this article were presented at the Annual Graduate Conference, held at King’s India Institute, King’s College London, in 2023, and at the European Conference on Politics and Gender, held at Ghent University in 2024. The feedback received at these conferences was immensely beneficial. The authors are grateful to Nirban Ray, Rana Saikia, and Hemant Dogra for their help in accessing some of the materials for this article. Lastly, they extend their heartfelt thanks to Roshni, Debasish, Sourav, Gayotree and Pranab for reading the earlier drafts of this article and for their valuable support throughout the writing process.
Competing interests
The authors declare none.
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