in partnership with South Asia Center
About the Seminar:
India’s Maternity Benefits (Amendment) Act in 2017 was widely celebrated as it raised the number of weeks of paid maternity benefits to 26 weeks. However, these provisions apply to a tiny fraction of women in formal employment. A legal recognition of universal maternity entitlements in India came with the enactment of the National Food Security Act 2013, which made a provision of ₹ 6,000 per child. This seminar will present the findings of the Jaccha-Baccha Survey (JABS)—a survey of pregnant and lactating women in rural India—conducted between June and October 2019 in seven states.
About the Speaker:
Reetika Khera is a development economist and works on social policy in India. Currently, she is an Associate Professor of Economics at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi. Previously, she was an Associate Professor at the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Ahmedabad. She studied at the Delhi School of Economics (M.A. and Ph.D.) and Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex (M.Phil.). She was a post-doctoral Research Associate at Princeton University where she worked on child nutrition. She has published in professional journals, magazines, and newspapers on issues of food security, NREGA, education, child nutrition, and elections in India.