Context: Actor Anuskha Sharma and her husband, Indian cricket captain Virat Kohli, became parents to a girl on January 11. While the Indian team is on a tour to Australia, Kohli came back to India after the first Test, on paternity leave.

Law on paternity leave

• Unlike maternity leave, which is legally mandated, the private sector is not bound to provide paternity leave in India.
• There is a legal stipulation for central government employees –– a “male civil servant (including an apprentice, probationer) with less than two surviving children may be granted Paternity Leave for a period of 15 days before or up to six months from the date of delivery of the child.”
• The “less than two surviving children” means the employee can take paternity leaves only for his first two children.
• Thus, the decision on how long a paternity leave they wish to provide rests with a particular company.
• The longest leave –– six months –– is provided by Ikea, which extends rules from home country Sweden to India.
• Among Indian companies, Zomato made news in 2019 when it decided to give a 26-week paternity leave to its employees.
• For women, on the other hand, the law mandates that female workers of all establishments with 10 or more workers can take 26 weeks of paid leave, up to eight weeks of which can be claimed before the delivery of the child.

Effect of the imbalance

• Over the years, many have pointed out that while short paternity leaves deprive fathers of the chance to spend time with their newborns and burden mothers unfairly with the bulk of caregiving, they also make hiring men more advantageous for companies.

Societal attitudes

• Socially, child-rearing is still largely considered a woman’s responsibility in India, and thus, if companies are not offering long paternity leaves, it is also because employees are not asking for it.
• In 2016, when demands were made that paternity leave be made legally binding just like maternity leaves, then WCD minister Maneka Gandhi had said: “I will be happy to give it, but for a man, it will be just a holiday, he won’t do anything.”
• In 2017, Congress MP Rajeev Satav had moved a private members Bill, the Paternity Benefit Bill, 2017, which proposed equal maternity and paternity leaves across all sectors. It has not moved forward.

https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/virat-kohlis-paternity-leave-says-labour-laws-sunil-gavaskar-7143725/

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