A study published in "Lancet" indicates that more than one in four women in Andhra Pradesh are married before reaching the age of 18.
Child marriages still prevalent in India AP witnesses more than one in four women getting married before 18 years of age. (iStock)
India’s progress towards eliminating the practice of child marriage has been stagnating in recent years, a recent study has revealed.
The study, published in The Lancet Global Health, revealed that Andhra Pradesh topped in child marriages among the South Indian states.
The research indicated that more than one in four women in Andhra Pradesh got married before the age of 18.
In Telangana, more than one in five girls entered into wedlock before the marriageable age of 18.
Number of child marriages in India.
According to the report, the prevalence of girls’ child marriage in Andhra Pradesh was reported at 29.6 percent in 2021, followed by Telangana (23.4 percent), Karnataka (20.5 percent), Tamil Nadu (12.7 percent), and Kerala (6.2 percent).
West Bengal topped the list in India with 41.4 percent of girls getting married before the age of 18. In Rajasthan, the rate was 21.3 percent.
The study stated that 14.6 percent of boys in Andhra Pradesh, 13.5 percent in Telangana, 4.8 percent in Tamil Nadu, 4 percent in Karnataka, and 0.8 percent in Kerala got married before the prescribed age of 21.
Bihar reported the most number of boys getting married (26.6 percent) before the age of 21, followed closely by Rajasthan (26.4 percent).
According to the study, one in five girls and about one in six boys in India tied the knot before the legally permitted age of 18 and 21, respectively. It reflected a stagnation in the progress made towards eradicating the scourge of child marriage.
Between 2016 and 2021, the practice of child marriage became more common in some states and Union Territories (UTs), the researchers said.
Girl child marriages increased in six states, including Manipur, Punjab, Tripura, and West Bengal, while eight states, including Chhattisgarh, Goa, Manipur, and Punjab, witnessed a rise in boy child marriages, the researchers found after analysing data from India’s National Family Health Surveys from 1993 to 2021.
The research team, comprising scholars from Harvard University and those affiliated with the Indian government, however, said that child marriage had declined nationally.
The prevalence of marriage among underage girls decreased from 49 percent in 1993 to 22 percent in 2021, while that of boys came down from 7 percent in 2006 to 2 percent in 2021.
Nevertheless, progress towards stopping the practice of child marriage altogether stalled between 2016 and 2021, the researchers said. Instances of child marriages were on a downslide between 2006 and 2016.
According to UNICEF, child marriage violates human rights, as it compromises the development of children.
Child marriage was often the result of entrenched gender inequality, making girls disproportionately affected by the practice, the UN agency said.
Ending child marriage would be critical for achieving the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5, meant to “achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls” by 2030.
Specifically, the SDG’s Target 5.3 envisaged to “eliminate all harmful practices, such as child, early and forced marriage and female genital mutilation”.
One in five girls worldwide (19 percent) were married young in 2022.
While the practice of child marriage has come down globally, the “profound effects of Covid-19 are threatening this progress, with up to 10 million additional girls at risk of child marriage over a decade from the onset of the pandemic”, the organisation said.
In the study, the researchers considered men and women aged 20-24 who were married before turning 18 in their analysis even though India legally considers marriage of boys before age 21 to be child marriage.
The study included more than 13.4 million women and more than 1.4 million men in the analysis.
The researchers noted that increased global attention to doing away with child marriage had led many countries to pass legislation to ban the practice.
In India, they said, the policy response to prevent child marriage involved legal prohibition intended to directly prevent child marriage, referring to the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, passed in 2006. The Act set the legal age of marriage for men to 21 years and women to 18 years.
The researchers added that other policies and schemes were implemented to address the underlying drivers of the practice with such programmes focusing on expanding social protections, increasing girls’ education, and reducing economic vulnerability.
They said that state-level governments had been crucial partners to strengthen efforts to end child marriage.
Citing the example of Uttar Pradesh, they said the state “achieved a dramatic decrease in the prevalence and headcount for child marriage in girls”.
Other states, such as West Bengal, struggled, they said.
The researchers said that evidence gaps on the effective elimination of child marriage globally remain, with interventions such as cash transfers showing poor success in certain geographies, such as India.
They described the observed state-level and UT-level stagnation in doing away with child marriage in India as a “big concern” and that “re-igniting” progress in this direction was necessary to achieve SDG Target 5.3.
May 14, 2024
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