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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Without maternity benefits -Aditi Priya

Without maternity benefits -Aditi Priya

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published Published on Nov 29, 2018   modified Modified on Nov 29, 2018
-The Hindu

The government’s maternity benefit programme must be implemented better and comply with the Food Security Act

Yashoda Devi was five months pregnant with her third child when we met her in Jharkhand in June. She was in extreme pain. The doctor had told her that she was very weak and had advised her to improve her nutritional intake. But Ms. Devi did not have money to follow the doctor’s advice.

Not serving its purpose

Ms. Devi was one of the 98 women we interviewed in the course of a small survey in 12 villages spread across two blocks of Jharkhand: Manika in Latehar district and Khunti in Khunti district. We enquired about the financial and physical hardships experienced by the respondents during pregnancy and delivery, and also studied the implementation of the Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana (PMMVY), a maternity benefit programme, nearly one year after it was officially launched.

Under the National Food Security Act (NFSA) of 2013, every pregnant woman is entitled to maternity benefits of ?6,000, unless she is already receiving similar benefits as a government employee or under other laws. The PMMVY was announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on December 31, 2016. Unfortunately, it violates the NFSA in several ways. First, the benefits have been reduced from ?6,000 to ?5,000 per child. Second, they are now restricted to the first living child. Third, they are further restricted to women above the age of 18 years.

The scheme largely defeats the purpose it is supposed to serve: according to a recent analysis, it excludes more than half of all pregnancies because first-order births account for only 43% of all births in India. In our sample, less than half of the women met the PMMVY eligibility criteria. Among those who were eligible, a little over half had applied for maternity benefits.

The application process is cumbersome and exclusionary: a separate form has to be filled, signed and submitted for each of the three instalments, along with a copy of the applicant’s mother-child protection card, her Aadhaar card, her husband’s Aadhaar card, and the details of a bank account linked to her Aadhaar number. The compulsory linking of the applicant’s bank account with Aadhaar often causes problems. Further, the PMMVY provides little assistance to women who lose their baby, because the successive payments are made only if the corresponding conditionalities are met.

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The Hindu, 29 November, 2018, https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/without-maternity-benefits/article25616970.ece?homepage=true


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