Maternity Leave: NITI Aayog Member Suggests Public, Private Sectors To Increase It To 9 Months

Having a baby isn't an easy feat. Post delivery, be it a vaginal or C-section, every woman undergoes major physical and mental changes in her body. A woman is expected to be on her feet a few hours after bringing a new life into this world.

As the woman steps into a new role, a lot of challenges follow - recovery from childbirth, bonding with the baby, and adjusting to the new life to name a few. Getting back to work after delivering a baby is another challenge that keeps bothering mothers in the workforce. However, maternity leave provides some relief.

Maternity Leave In India

Maternity leave is a paid leave offered to expecting working women to take care of themselves and their newborns. The leaves not only retain her job while she is off from work but also entitles her to a monthly salary.

In India, under the Maternity Benefit Act 1961, earlier, pregnant working women were offered paid leave for 12 weeks. In the year 2016, the Maternity Act was amended and maternity leaves were increased to 26 weeks.

Maternity Leave Period Should Be Increased: NITI Aayog Member

NITI (National Institution For Transforming India) Aayog is a state-of-the-art resource centre set up by the government of India to promote research, and innovation, offer strategic policy vision for the government, and deal with unforeseeable issues. NITI Aayog’s member V K Paul recently suggested that both private and public sectors should consider increasing paid maternity leaves for pregnant working women to nine months as per a report by PTI.

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FICCI Ladies Organisation (FLO) in a statement quoting V K Paul said, "Both private and public sector need to sit together to think about increasing the maternity leave of the mothers from present six months to nine months."

Further, according to the statement, the NITI Aayog member asked the private sector to help them design comprehensive care for children by designing creches and doing the needful for elders.

He said, "As millions of care workers will be needed in the future, we have to develop systematic soft and hard skilling training." Sudha Shivkumar, president, of FICCI Ladies Organisation (FLO), shared that the global care economy including both paid and unpaid labour providing childcare, elder care, and domestic chores services is an important sector as it will help improve economic growth, gender equity, and women empowerment.

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She added that care work is economically valuable but globally undervalued. "In India, the biggest lacunae is that we lack a system for properly identifying care economy workers, and relative to other nations, India's public spending on the care economy is extremely low," Sudha Shivkumar said.

A maternity leave offers an expecting mother multiple benefits including getting 26 weeks of paid leave, work from home option, job security, creche facility after joining work to name a few. If the maternity leave period gets extended to nine months, we are sure it will further benefit new mothers and give them a good amount of time to heal from childbirth and get back to work. What do you think? Share your thoughts with us on our social media handles.