HEALTH AND WELFARE. 263
Employment of Trained Midwives.

In addition to health visitors, trained midwives are essential
so that the activities of the untrained dat may be restricted. It has been
the policy of some provincial Governments to utilise their maternity
hospitals as a training ground for suitable women, and in Madras, for
instance, numbers of qualified midwives pass out annually from these
hospitals. Some employers have also recognised the benefits to be ob-
tained from trained women. The Eastern Coal Company in Jharia have
for some time past employed trained midwives and have recently appoint-
ed a maternity supervisor who has been engaged in training indigenous
dais and attending women and children. For some years the Asansol
Mines Board of Health has maintained three certificated midwives to
give free attendance and advice to the women of the mining settlement,
and during 1930 an experimental scheme for the training of dais at two
selected centres was sanctioned by the Board. If maternity relief schemes
for women workers are to succeed, trained midwives must be obtained to
work in the child welfare and maternity relief centres under the health
visitor, to attend confinements in the houses of the workers and to call
in skilled help where necessary. Indeed, even with a woman doctor on
the staff of the municipal or local board hospital, the medical service pro-
vided is incomplete without a number of these trained midwives, whose
work outside should be linked up with the maternity wards and with the
women’s clinics.
Maternity Benefits.
In some of the larger industrial concerns employers have volun-

tarily introduced maternity benefit schemes for their women workers,
but, except in Bombay and the Central Provinces, where Acts of limited
application have been passed, there is no legislation on the subject. As most
people now accept the principle of maternity benefit for industrially
employed women, it is unnecessary to put forward here any special
plea for such a scheme. The general standard of life being so low, there
can be little doubt that some form of maternity benefit would be of great
value to the health of the woman worker and her child at a vulnerable
period in the lives of both. We do not attach importance to the argu-
ment that compulsory maternity benefits will result in employers reducing
the amounts already being paid to the minimum laid down by law. Most
pioneers in the field of social betterment are not deterred by enactments
compelling others to follow in their footsteps. Nor do we attach weight
to the argument that legislation will result in an appreciable restriction
of the employment of women who are an essential part of certain of
the leading Indian industries. We believe the time is ripe for the in-
troduction of legislation throughout India making a maternity benefit
scheme compulsory in respect of women permanently employed
In industrial establishments on full-time processes. We would exempt
from such provisions seasonal and part-time workers and would confine
legislation to those women employed full time in the perennial factories
covered by the Factories Act. Some of us would like to see the legisla-

tion extended to women employed at the mines and on the docks,