Toward a Limited and ‘Quality’ Population: Debates on Maternity Benefits in Post-independence India

In late colonial and early independence India, women were largely imagined as reproductive members of society responsible for the upbringing of workers and citizens for the nation. The policy of maternity benefits was perceived as an impetus to healthy mothering thus resulting in the reproduction of healthy children and citizens in the future. While this notion continued to be the primary rationale for maternity benefits even in the post-independence period, we will be confronted by some rather difficult questions, as we will see that the discourse of maternity benefits was equally burdened with the fear of overpopulation, especially during the mid-twentieth century. On the one hand, maternity benefits were promoted as a means to reproduce healthy citizens. At the same time, the reproduction of particular sections of society, especially the industrial poor, was simultaneously criminalised due to the fear of overpopulation. For some, maternity benefits were detrimental to achieving population control, others suggested promoting limited maternity benefits as a tool for regulating the population. This paper critically examines those debates, to see, how debates on maternity benefits became a unique site for negotiating the questions of population in this period.