Child Marriage

Context: A recent study on child marriage in India, published in The Lancet, has highlighted a positive trend of decreasing child marriages across the country. However, the study also pointed out that four states, namely Bihar (16.7%), West Bengal (15.2%), Uttar Pradesh (12.5%), and Maharashtra (8.2%), still account for more than half of the total number of child marriages among girls in India.

The study titled ‘Prevalence of girl and boy child marriage across States and Union Territories in India, 1993–2021’ reveals significant findings about the state of child marriage in India.

• High Prevalence of Child Marriage in Girls: one in five girls in India is still married before reaching the legal age.
• Regional Variations: While some Indian states have successfully reduced the prevalence and headcount of child marriages among girls, others like West Bengal have struggled significantly.
• National Figures: Nationally, the percentage of women aged 20-24 years who were married before 18 is 23.3%.

These findings underscore the ongoing challenge of addressing child marriage in India, particularly in regions like West Bengal, and highlight the need for targeted policies and interventions.

What is child Marriage?

Child marriage, a practice found in certain societies, particularly in India, typically involves two distinct forms. The first form is where a young child, often a girl under eighteen, is married off to an adult man. This form is more direct and immediate in its execution. The second form is more of a future arrangement: parents of a young girl and boy agree to marry their children to each other when they both reach a more suitable age. In this latter case, the boy and girl usually do not meet until the time of their wedding ceremony.

This practice, deeply rooted in cultural and social norms, often raises significant concerns regarding the rights and welfare of the children involved.

Laws for minimum age for Marriage

• Hindu marriage act (1955), Indian Christian marriages act (1872) and Special Marriage Act (1954) prescribed minimum age of marriage as 18 years for bride and 21 years for groom.
• Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, 2006 prohibits marriage below 18 years for women & 21 years for men.

Despite legal age of marriage for women being set at 18 years, it was found that in almost all States, women continued to get married before they turned 18. For ex.

**Given facts published by UNICEF- Ending child Marriage -A profile of progress in India (2023)

Reasons for child Marriage:  

Socio-cultural reasons

1. Traditions and cultural mandates: The concept of "honour" is deeply entrenched in many societies, where a girl’s chastity is closely tied to family honour. Families may marry off girls early to ensure they remain virgins until marriage, thus upholding the family’s reputation.
2. Demand for dowry : The illegal yet persistent practice of dowry puts pressure on families to marry daughters early, as the dowry amount tends to increase with a girl’s age and education level. As Girl children are sometimes viewed as an economic burden, and marrying them off can be seen as a way to alleviate financial stress through the system of dowry.
3. Caste, community and ethnic pressure : If the children are married at an early age, they will not exercise deviant behaviour of searching of their partners on their own, which can be out of the caste or community groups.
4. Economic and Educational backwardness: The prevalence of child marriage is higher among poorer households. Financial constraints often lead to earlier marriages for girls. Because of this Child marriage is more common in rural areas and amongst certain social groups like Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. Education level greatly affects the likelihood of child marriage, with a higher incidence among women with no or primary education.
5. Safety and security problems of girls:
   • Where schools are far from home, the journey to and from school can be dangerous for girls. Risks include abduction, trafficking, or assault.
   • marrying a girl at a young age can protect her from sexual violence and harassment.

Economic reasons

• Poverty in rural areas makes families believe that they do not need to go for family planning as more children will lead to more hands to work. Families think that boy will remain with them and girls will be married off to other families. So, they wish to marry them at an early age.

Historical reasons: There was a belief that girls should get married before the onset of puberty.

Trafficking: Child marriage can intersect with human trafficking, where impoverished families may be coerced into selling their daughters into marriage or prostitution for financial gain, often to support their sons, thereby subjecting the girls to harm and exploitation.

Legal and policy related measures:

• The current act does not annul such marriages. It only gives the power to the bride to call off the marriage once she is an adult.
• Ineffective enforcement of legislation and laws
• Absence of females from the process of law-making.

Awareness and Limitations of Social Protection Programs: Families at risk of child marriage often lack awareness of available social protection programs, which tend to focus on cash transfers without addressing the complex issues surrounding child marriage.

Impact of child Marriage

1. Low levels of educational attainment: Child brides in India face significant hurdles in continuing their education. Statistics show that fewer than 2 in 10 married girls remain in school, which highlights the disruption of education due to early marriage​.
2. Violence, Exploitation, and Abuse: Child marriage violates children's rights and places them at high risk of various forms of violence, exploitation, and abuse. While it affects both girls and boys, girls are disproportionately impacted.
3. Economic Consequences: child marriage can initiate an intergenerational cycle of poverty, where those married as children are more likely to lack the skills and knowledge needed to secure employment that would enable them to lift their families out of poverty.
4. Early pregnancy results in adverse health outcomes for both mother and child: Incidence of early marriage and childbearing are important causes of undernutrition in India. Children born to teenage mothers are more likely to be undernourished than children of adult mothers. India is home to more stunted children than any other country and is one of the ten countries with the largest burden of teenage pregnancy. ((Example- Recently, 10 infants died at Murshidabad Medical College and Hospital in a span of 24 hours. The hospital authorities said the majority of the children were born with extremely low birth weight. Murshidabad, one of the economically poorer districts of the State, has one of the highest numbers of child marriages in West Bengal. The NFHS ­ 5 points out that 55.4% of women aged 20­24 years are married before the age of 18 years in the district.))
5. population growth: Child marriage often leads to earlier and more frequent childbearing, contributing to population growth due to limited access to education and family planning resources.
6. Restricted Mobility: Child marriage can restrict the mobility of young brides and reduce their access to mass media such as TV, newspapers, and the internet compared to their unmarried counterparts. This restriction can further limit their exposure to information, education, and opportunities for personal development.
7. Limited or even absent peer networks: as their social interactions are often restricted to their spouse's family and household. This can isolate them from their peers and limit their opportunities for social development and support.

Govt Measures:

The Child Marriage Restraint Act, 1929: known as the Sarda Act, was a law enacted to prohibit the solemnization of child marriages in India. It set the minimum age of marriage at 14 years for girls and 18 years for boys. It extends to the whole of India except the State of Jammu and Kashmir and it applies also to all citizens of India within and beyond India.

Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, 2006:

• It was implemented in India to address the shortcomings of the Child Marriage Restraint Act of 1929.
• This updated law increased the legal age of marriage to 18 years for girls and 21 years for boys and established harsher punishments for those who perform, permit, or promote child marriages.
• It envisages preventing child marriage with punishments of rigorous imprisonment for two years and/ or fine of Rs. 1 lakh.
• The Act also provides for the appointment of Child Marriage Prohibition Officer whose duties are to prevent child marriages and spread awareness regarding the same.
• In addition, several national flagship programmes, including the Beti Bachao Beti Padhao (BBBP) scheme, the Scheme for Adolescent Girls (SAG) (previously known as SABLA), the Rashtriya Kishor Swasthya Karyakram (RKSK) (adolescent health) programme, various national- and state level conditional cash transfer (CCT) programmes for girls  have been implemented to prevent child marriage like-  Kanyashree Prakalpa(West Bengal) is a conditional cash transfer scheme aimed at incentivising the schooling of all teenage girls between the ages of 13 and 18, and simultaneously discouraging child marriage. 

Steps may eventually reduce the age of marriage

• Plugging the legal loopholes & Progressively the minimum age for marriage for girl child should be increased from 18 to 21. (Government had introduced the Prohibition of Child Marriage (Amendment) Bill, 2021 in Parliament in December 2021 for raising the age of marriage of women to 21 years to bring it on par with the men and the Bill has been referred to a Parliamentary Standing Committee.)
• Enforcement of Right to Education Act, provisions should be made for free education of girl child till the university level.
• Conditional cash transfer schemes to improve attendance of girls in schools and skill training.
• Ensuring a safe environment to women free from constant threat of rape and sexual assault which is why girls are married off early.
• Creating awareness among females, families and communities at large about need to educate females and marriage at an appropriate age.
• Focused attention at locations where there is more prevalence of child marriages.
• Civil Society organisations and NGOs should be encouraged to tackle the issue.

Child marriage is now firmly on the global development agenda, most prominently through its inclusion in Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) target 5.3, which aims to eliminate the practice by 2030.

Although indicator 5.3.1 measures child marriage among girls, the practice occurs among boys as well. Regardless of gender, marriage before adulthood is a breach of children’s rights.