It’s nice to see a Women and Child Development minister who keeps tabs on developments in the field and proposes progressive ideas. Taking the same path as some private firms which proposed better maternity benefits, minister Maneka Gandhi too has proposed to change government regulations and extend the current maternity leave period from three months to eight months.
The proposed eight-month maternity leave will include one month leave before expected delivery date and seven months after delivery.
Earlier the government had proposed a six month leave, as announced by the Labour Department, but an 8-month leave is so much better. By the age of 7 months, a child’s diet is already being supplemented with pureed vegetables, fruits and legumes in addition to breast milk. So this puts lesser pressure on working mothers to ensure proper breast feeding schedules, especially in a country like ours where pumping rooms don’t exist yet.
Maneka has also urged the Labour Ministry to include women from both organised and unorganised sectors. This means your maid may get an 8-month maternity leave, but you will too. So worry not.
Now, we don’t know when this proposal may actually get implemented, but Maneka Gandhi has made other similarly good proposals recently. This includes a slew of measures to make child adoption easier and quicker and to create a registry listing child offenders. We hope these get implemented soon, because we are sure that the year it all comes together, it may spell a better year for women, at least.
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