Kudos for raising the minimum age of marriage for women. Now work towards changing mindsets

Varsha Pillai

On December 15, the Union Cabinet passed the proposal to raise the legal age of marriage for women from 18 to 21 years. This was based on the recommendations by the Central Task Force committee that examined issues connected to age of motherhood, the need to lower maternal mortality rate (MMR), and the need to address impact on nutritional levels of mothers and children.

The task force also stressed that a woman should be at least 21 years old at the time of first pregnancy, and a delay in marriage can have a positive financial, social, and health impact on families, society, and children. Child marriage is certainly an issue that seems far from over in India. One in three of the world’s child brides live in India, and Unicef states that out of 223 million child brides, 102 million were married before turning 15.

The pandemic has exacerbated the problem of child marriage, and Unicef states that around 100 million girls were at risk of child marriage in the next decade. The report stated that the closing of schools, economic stress, parental deaths, and pregnancies could intensify the risk of child marriage.

The NFHS data states that although the percentage of underage marriages declined from 26.8 percent to 23.3 percent in the last five years, the percentage of child marriages in rural India is at a high of 27 percent.

India’s Special Marriage Act of 1954, and the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act of 2006 prescribe 18 and 21 years as the minimum age of consent for marriage for women and men, respectively. The Cabinet’s recent decision changes the legal age of marriage for women to 21, while it remains the same for men.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi alluded to this move in his Independence Day speech in 2020, when he stated that “We have formed a committee to ensure that the daughters are no longer suffering from malnutrition and they are married off at the right age.” Given its inclusion in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) under target 5.3 that aims to eliminate the practice of child marriage by 2030, this move by the Government of India is in the right direction — however, more needs to be done before this harmful generational practice is eliminated from the country.

Even the taskforce committee that put forward this recommendation suggested that unless certain suggestions, such as the introduction of sex education in school curriculum, enhancement of access to schools and colleges for girls (including ensuring safe transportation to educational institutions), inclusion of skills and business training, and steps towards women empowerment and livelihood improvement, the new change will not be effective.

The government will need to work harder to create opportunities for girls to stay in school and build new skills; this will require greater number of resources and political will. Without widespread social acceptance of this new proposed law, it will remain largely on paper. Nationwide awareness programmes will be needed to socially mobilise communities to ensure increased reception of the new law.

To stop this practice we need to change the mindset where marriage is seen as a one stop solution to protect girls from sexual abuse. The fear among parents who feel it is unsafe to send girls to schools far away from their homes, the fear that girls will become too independent, and the fear that they may marry outside of the community are what ensures the perpetuity of the practice of child marriage. Unless we have actions in place to tackle these fears stemming from lack of safety measures, discrimination, and systemic inequality, child marriages will continue, albeit illegally.