Prevention of child marriage: Breaking inter-generational gender exclusion

Child marriage is a deeply entrenched social evil which is perpetuated by poverty and lack of social choices. Despite the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act 2006, being at the place, according to which a Child Marriage is a marriage in which either the woman is below the age of 18 or the man is below the age of 21, is a criminal offence, child marriage is widely rampant in the country. The recent arrests relating to child marriage in Assam, have created a media uproar nationally and internationally. The criminalisation and penalisation of the same came in the wake of the Assam Cabinet’s decision to book men who marry girls aged below 14 under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012(POCSO) and the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, 2006(PCMA). Himanta Biswa Sarma, the chief minister of Assam briefing the Cabinet decision states that men marrying girls below 14 years of age will be facing non-bailable charges, while those marrying girls between 14 and 16 years of age will be charged under bailable sections. If the groom is below 14 years of age, he will be sent to a reform house. The Assam Cabinet’s decision is progressive, revolutionary and praiseworthy if viewed against the backdrop of the prevalent grim social realities related to crime against underage women due to child marriage. The need of such intervention is a sine qua non to improve the conditions of women in the country, particularly of such a vulnerable age group. Statistical data/facts are self-explanatory in such situations. As many as 32% of women in the age group of 20-24 years in Assam are married before 18, according to the National Family Health Survey-5 (2019-21). Also, 12 per cent of women in the 15-19 age group in the state were either mothers or pregnant. The majority of child brides in the world 223 million of them, or one-third of the total, live in India and at least 1.5 million underage girls get married annually in India. According to the National Family Health Survey (2019-21), underage marriage accounted for 23.3 per cent of the total marriages in India. In India, nearly 16 per cent of adolescent girls aged 15-19 are currently married. While the prevalence of girls getting married before age 18 has declined from 47 per cent to 27 per cent between 2005-2006 and 2015-2016, it is still too high. The NCRB says in 2019, 523 cases were registered under the PCMA, 2006 while in 2018, 501 cases were lodged. Prevention of child marriage is crucial to address several human rights violations that stand in the way of gender inclusion and equality. International organizations like UNICEF and UNFPA have a dedicated stand to eradicate this global scourge. UNFPA promotes policies, programmes and legislation designed to end child marriage. The Sustainable Development Goals had included early marriage in target 5.3, aiming to eliminate it by 2030. Child marriage in India has grave implications for population control as adolescent brides are likely to have a high fertility rate thus impacting a rise in TFR (Total Fertility Rate). Despite child marriage, being a widespread phenomenon, there are only a few NGOs or non-state actors that offer help to prevent child marriage and the deep-rooted societal evil norms fail the government’s efforts to fight this large-scale societal scourge, leaving the girls to face the trauma alone and making them the most vulnerable section of the society. Many reasons can be attributed to child marriage being a widespread phenomenon. Apart from economic reasons, security and societal pressure are other reasons behind child marriage. The pandemic of the corona has aggravated the situation further. Child marriage negatively influences children’s rights to education, mental growth and development, health and protection which are fundamental rights and fall the under the scope of Article 21 of the Indian Constitution which is a basic structure of the Constitution making it inviolable under any circumstance. A girl who is married as a child is more likely to be out of school and turn non-contributing to financial activities and become less productive, thus contributing to a low Labour Force Participation Rate(LFPR) for women. According to the Annual Periodic Labour Force Survey LFPR registered for women is 25.1 per cent against 57.5 per cent for men in 2020-21. As per the International Labour Organisation (ILO), there are various economic and social factors that affect the LFPR negativity, of which child marriage is a major one. Thus child marriage negatively impacts the national economy and can lead to an inter-generational cycle of poverty as girls and boys married as children are more likely to lack the skills, knowledge and job prospects. A child bride is more susceptible to domestic violence and becomes infected with sexual diseases and HIV/AIDS. Child marriage is the main driving factor to negatively impacts the health, medical well-being, and nutritional status of the mother and the child, both in the ante-natal and post-natal way. It also adversely affects key parameters such as Infant Mortality Rate (IMR), Maternal Mortality Rate (MMR), Total Fertility Rate (TFR), Sex Ratio at Birth (SRB) and Child Sex Ratio (CSR). The Assam government’s decision to criminalise child marriage can be viewed as enabling legislation under Articles 14 and 21 of the Constitution. The recent overdrive stems out of its high priority target to combat the high maternal mortality and infant mortality rates in the state which can be reasonably linked to early motherhood stemming out of child marriage and to ensure the right to education, right against child marriage, right against sexual harassment, right against domestic violence and a right to secure a safe environment for a child. The goal to reduce MMR particularly is in tune with SDG 3, which aims by 2030, to reduce the global MMR to less than 70 per 100,000 live births. The allegations that the arrests are against the Muslim community can be nullified as the PCMA 2006 is a secular act and applicable across all religions and overriding personal laws that affect a child’s safety and growth. As per Muslim personal law, the marriageable age is on the attainment of puberty or 15 years. The new amendment on child marriage proposes an increase in the marriageable age for women to 21 and to be cut across all the personal laws which will uphold Articles 14 and 21 of the Constitution. There are attempts at communalising the arrests, as the number of such arrests is higher in most of the Muslim-majority districts. However, it does not signify the government’s communal attitude but rather exhibits the exponential growth of such abuse against minor females among Muslims, which needs to be brought to books in order to establish social justice and equality across all religions and communities. The Government of India has been commendably working towards the empowerment of adolescent girls. And has launched various schemes like Scheme for Adolescent Girls(SAG), SABLA, Beti Bachao Beti Padhao, Poshan Abhiyan, Balika Samriddhi Yojana, CBSE Udaan Scheme, National level Scheme of Incentive to adolescent Girls for Secondary Education (NSIGSE), with a ‘scale up strategy’ to empower adolescent girls, devised to state intervention to break inter-generational life-cycle of nutritional and gender disadvantage and offer a supportive environment for self-development in addition to preparing a gender-responsive budget. The scholarship scheme of the Assam Government under ‘Assam Vikash Yojana’ for SC/ST girls when they are in 9-10th standard is socially inclusive. Nutrition provision, Iron and Folic Acid (IFA) supplementation, periodic health check-ups and Referral services, mainstreaming of out-of-school girls to join formal schooling, bridge course/skill training, life skill education, home management, legal intervention and their strict implementation is important. To end child marriages, state and non-state actors alike must put girls, across the diverse spectrum of society and marginality, at the centre of the solution. Empowering girls requires focused investment and collaboration, like providing girls with the services and safety, education and skills, collective societal and governmental contribution to the achievement of specific results, some short-term (increasing access to education, reducing anaemia), medium-term (ending child marriage) and long-term (eliminating gender-biased sex selection and reaching gender equality). Legal intervention and strict implementation of legal provisions are significant as they have long-term social and economic gains and can secure the safety and security of adolescent girls. A study says, government interventions have resulted in an average benefit-cost ratio of 16.8pc and are projected to decrease the rate of marriages of girls aged 15–17 years to 7.5 percentage points by 2050 and by 2030, the proportion of girls completing school is estimated to increase by 13 pc points along with increased productivity of 16.4pc. Thus to end child marriage, both state and non-state actors, must put girls, across the diverse spectrum of community and marginality, at the centre of the solution. In fact, while the state must continue to criminalise and penalise such acts, state legal interventions should be seen as weaponising young women towards empowerment, who are inter-generationally placed at the margins in the Indian context. The author is a senior faculty in the department of History, ARSD College, DU. She has done her MPhil, and PhD programme from Center for Historical Studies. She has more than 8 research publications in international peer-reviewed journals in research and is a regular columnist with various news dailies. Views expressed are personal. Read all the Latest News , Trending News , Cricket News , Bollywood News , India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.