Surrogate Mothers in Indian Maternity Benefit Law: A Blind Spot or a Blind Eye?

Chapter 6 of the Social Security Code, 2020 provides for maternity leave and benefits in India. While this chapter is inclusive and does not conform to traditional notions of motherhood and pregnancy by including benefits for adoptive parents, commissioning parents and parents who miscarry, there seems to one glaring loophole. This loophole is that for the surrogate mother (child-bearing mother). In India, only altruistic surrogacy is permitted after 2015. Therefore, these surrogate mothers receive no consideration and cannot be renumerated or aided by the commissioning parents. The law seems to be gray on the point of whether surrogate mothers would be eligible for maternity benefit. The paper attempts to locate the Indian treatment of surrogacy within population theories and establish the link between labour legislation and larger policy goals.