28 August,2011 08:09 AM IST | | Paromita Vohra
In 1928, a man called RS Asavle introduced a Private Members Bill encouraged by NM Joshi, after whom the central road in what was once Bombay's textile mill area, is named. Men and women from all over came and lived in this area in the early 1900s -- all for work in Bombay's prosperous textile industry.
Illustration/Jishu Dev Malakar
Between 1911 and 1930, women made up between a fourth to fifth of mill workers. After 1930, their numbers began dropping and by 1947, about a tenth of mill workers were women. Why? It had something to do with that private member's bill.
But let's fast forward to 2011. Sapna Ramani-Sardana, a woman in her early 30s, joins a private hospital as a senior resident in the administrative department. She gets pregnant and applies for maternity leave, which as per the law is six months, even for contractual employees. She is refused and told to take leave without pay.
On returning to work she pursues the case, with mixed results. Eventually, in August 2011, her superiors decide to do away with her post -- and defend their stand, saying she is not entitled to maternity leave. So, back to 1928. Asavle's Bill is tabled, later defended by BR Ambedkar. In 1929, it becomes the Bombay Maternity Benefits Act.
The term "rationalisation" was already being bandied about in the 1920s, by the textile industry. Where there's rationalisation, there's retrenchment. With the Act, women workers, who were often fired when they got pregnant, were even less appealing to employers and were the first to be laid off in the rationalisations. Many women workers then ended up concentrated in the unorganised sector as vegetable vendors, domestic workers, khanawalwalis -- as they continue to be today. Where there's a bill, there's a way out.
Following the Bombay Maternity Benefits Act, many provinces of British India passed similar regional legislations. It was only in 1961 that independent India passed a national act governing maternity benefits. That didn't help Ms Ramani-Sardana though. And she's an educated, English-speaking, middle-class person conscious of her rights, and willing to fight for them too.
Meanwhile Indian law doesn't have any paternity leave, and not too many men seem to be agitating for it. So while our culture drips with mother-veneration, when there's a new child, the system, Maternity Benefits Act or not, finds a way to keep Daddy at work and Mummy at home and since Mummy's work is not paid, should we think about? Yes? Ok, tell you what, let's replace all those recipe sections in periodicals with parenting columns.
We'll pay you with media attention, cool? Legislation can be curiously disingenuous, addressing one reality while bypassing all the other realities, which sustain and perpetuate that particular reality. This isn't only about a society that values men more than women.
It's also about a society that primarily values those things that generate money, a culture which feels that child rearing, illness, social service, teaching, creativity or personal life are just not as important as so-called professional activities which generate profit for organisations and corporates. That's why four private South Bombay hospitals this year have thought it "rational" to shut down their maternity wards which aren't as lucrative as super-speciality wards.
So, this is not corruption -- but what should we call this calculation of what matters and what can be dispensed with, this system in which cash is the only measure of value? Whom does it serve and who does it keep powerless and what injustices does it help us to "rationalise"? Some days, baby, a bill just don't seem enough, does it?
Paromita Vohra is an award-winning Mumbai-based filmmaker, writer and curator working with fiction and non-fiction. Reach her at ww.parodevi.com. The views expressed in this column are the individual's and don't represent those of the paper.
