When welfare met demographic concerns

A scholarly dissection of a contentious chapter in India’s legislative history has revealed how maternity benefit policies were deeply intertwined with population control concerns in the 1960s.

The study, by Prarthana Dutta and Mithilesh Kumar Jha of the Indian Institute of Technology-Guwahati’s Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, is significant given the discussions over the proposed Population Regulation Bill of 2019, seeking incentives for two-child families and disincentives for those with more children.

The duo’s research paper was published in the latest issue of Modern Asian Studies, a peer-reviewed academic journal published by the Cambridge University Press.

What the study found

The study revisits debates surrounding the Maternity Benefit Act of 1961 and discussions on the Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Bill of 1956. The researchers note that promoting maternal and infant health was the major rationale for the 65-year-old Act. “However, maternity benefits also came to be increasingly questioned in the mid-1960s for allegedly leading to more births and ‘derailing’ the national family planning programme. Limiting maternity benefits as a disincentive strategy for population control was proposed through various platforms,” the study says.

Examining the discussions on the 1965 Bill in Parliament, the researchers underline the arguments of Shakuntala Paranjpye, an advocate of birth control, who sought to add a restrictive clause limiting maternity benefits to the first two deliveries.

“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,” the study notes.

The researchers find that the discourse on maternity benefits became equally burdened with the concern for “overpopulation”. The population belonging to the “lower social strata”, such as the working class, was marked as a prolific reproducer and the major defaulter of the family planning programme.

“Indiscriminate reproduction”

“They (people in the lower social strata) 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,” the study notes.

“Despite leading to an intense debate among the legislators, the amendment, which was advocated as a measure leading towards a limited and quality population, was voted down. Nevertheless, the debates are worth exploring to understand the prevailing notions about reproductive behaviour, differential fertility, and alleged ignorance of the working-class women,” the study says.

Shift towards reproductive health

The researchers say that there has been a gradual shift towards reproductive health in family planning programmes since the late twentieth century. Simultaneously, issues of maternal and infant health have gained prominence in the debates on maternity benefits.

“A major rationale for the 2017 amendment to the (Maternity Benefit) 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,” they note.

“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, it largely went unnoticed,” they conclude.