CHILD MARRIAGE

THE practice of marrying girls off before they attain the legal age for marriage continues unabated, despite the growing outrage over child marriages in India. An indication of the fact that laws have failed to check marriages of minor girls comes with the latest UNICEF report. In a shocking disclosure, the report reveals that India has the eighth highest population of married adolescent girls in Asia and Africa. In fact, 30 per cent girls marry between the age of 15 and 18 years, and are thus deprived of their right to education and health. In Rajasthan, child marriages, often solemnised secretively, are widely prevalent.

While India boasts of demographic advantage in terms of its adolescent population, adolescents themselves continue to remain disadvantaged and often have to face sexual and physical exploitation. Early marriage also deprives them of the chance to blossom. As many minor girls become mothers, they are exposed to greater risks during pregnancy, and the risk of infant deaths too increases. While the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act 2006 has a provision for making the child marriage null and void, society and the law have to ensure that such marriages are not allowed in the first place. For, in a gender-biased society, nullification of a marriage will have its own repercussions detrimental to the fair sex.
While proposals like the compulsory registration of marriages and linking it with the issuance of ration cards and birth certificates can go a long way in curbing this social evil, institutions, especially panchayats, can play a positive role too, as sometimes they have done so in the past. If India has to reap dividends of its economic growth, it has to break the vicious cycle of poverty and undesirable social customs, which are deeply rooted in gender prejudices. For this both the law-enforcing agencies and society, including the NGOs, have to work in tandem. For the sake of both the present generation of young women and future children, marrying girls before they achieve adulthood must be prevented