Published Jun 06, 2026 | 7:00 AM ⚊ Updated Jun 06, 2026 | 7:00 AM
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Synopsis: One in four girls in Andhra Pradesh still marries before 18. As child marriage rates slowly fall, Chief Minister Naidu’s cash incentive policy for more children risks reversing that progress. Experts, field research and NFHS-6 data all warn the same thing: money without education and enforcement pushes girls backward.
One in four women aged 20 to 24 in Andhra Pradesh was married before she turned 18. That is what the National Family Health Survey-6, released earlier this year, tells us. The figure stands at 25.1 percent. In rural Andhra Pradesh, it sits at 28.9 percent.
These numbers represent progress. In NFHS-4, conducted in 2015-16, the figure stood at 33 percent. NFHS-5 brought it down to 29.3 percent. NFHS-6 moves it further to 25.1 percent. The direction is right. The pace is slow. And now, a new state policy threatens to reverse even that slow progress.
On 16 May, Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu announced cash incentives of Rs 30,000 for the birth of a third child and Rs 40,000 for a fourth. The stated concern is demographic: Andhra Pradesh’s total fertility rate has fallen below the replacement level of 2.1. Naidu has repeatedly warned of labour shortages and an ageing population.
But the same NFHS-6 data that frames his concern also tells a more complicated story. AP’s total fertility rate has risen from 1.7 in NFHS-5 to 1.8 in NFHS-6, without any policy intervention. Teen pregnancies, measured as women aged 15 to 19 who were already mothers or pregnant at the time of the survey, fell from 12.6 percent to 9.2 percent. Child marriage rates fell. Fertility edged up. The numbers do not describe a crisis. They describe a state in slow, fragile transition.
Three experts, a demographer, a child rights activist and a former national child rights commissioner, and a 2018 field study across five AP districts all point to the same risk: a cash incentive policy, designed without addressing the conditions that drive child marriage, could unwind years of hard-won progress.
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In 2018, the Centre for Economic and Social Studies conducted a study across Kurnool, Anantapur, Prakasam, Krishna and Visakhapatnam districts, five districts where child marriage rates ran highest in AP. The study, commissioned by Plan India and Mahita, interviewed 175 key informants and conducted 20 focus group discussions at village, mandal and district levels.
It identified 25 driving factors behind child marriage, grouped into four categories: traditions and social norms, poverty, lack of access to secondary education, and social pressure.
Economic insecurity emerged as the dominant force. Seventy-eight percent of key informants cited it as a primary cause. In Anantapur, where drought drives seasonal migration to Karnataka, the study found families performing child marriages specifically when money became available, not when the girl reached a particular age. The trigger was financial. Families under debt sought matches from wealthier Karnataka families who offered reverse dowry, locally called Kanyasulakam. A daughter’s marriage became a survival strategy.
The study also found that love and elopement, the discovery of a romantic relationship, prompted families to immediately arrange marriage to protect family honour. This emerged as a significant driver across Prakasam and Krishna districts.
The paper’s most direct policy finding: girls who transitioned from primary to secondary education sat in what one Child Development Project Officer(CDPO) called a “safe zone.” Almost every child marriage victim was either uneducated or a school dropout. The paper recommended extending free and compulsory education to age 18.
That recommendation has not been implemented at scale. The NFHS-6 figures confirm it.
Nimmaraju Ram Mohan, secretary of Help NGO, which works on child rights across Andhra Pradesh, has spent years intervening in child marriages at the village level. He describes a landscape that the 2018 paper would recognise.
The drivers the paper documented remain active. But their hierarchy has shifted. What the paper recorded as one factor among many, Ram Mohan now places at the top.
“The most common factor is adolescent relationships,” he said to South First. “When families learn that a girl is in a relationship, many choose to arrange her marriage immediately. This is one of the major drivers of child marriage today.”
Poverty, insecurity in tribal areas, migration fears and concerns about trafficking continue to push families toward early marriage. Girls increasingly enrol in school, but the risk window opens after Class 10 or Intermediate, when some drop out, join agricultural work or travel long distances to study.
The enforcement infrastructure has weakened since 2018. Ram Mohan points to a specific moment: when Childline 1098 moved from NGO operation to direct government control.
On top of that the help to get rescue done also depends on other resources. “When we informed the police and requested assistance, we were told that they did not have sufficient staff to intervene,” he said. “We have personally experienced situations where, while trying to stop a child marriage, local political leaders would intervene and ask us not to proceed.”
The 2018 paper documented the same pattern: political interference, community sympathy for families, and a gap between actual incidence and NCRB recorded cases. Seven years later, Ram Mohan describes the same gap, the same interference, the same hollow enforcement.
The Anganwadi system, which the 2018 paper identified as a potential last-mile monitoring resource, remains present but inactive. Every village has Anganwadi workers under the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) programme. They know who is getting married. They know which girls are at risk. Ram Mohan is direct about what this means.
“The problem is not the absence of a system,” he said. “The problem is that the system is not functioning effectively. There is inadequate monitoring and accountability. Many officials are aware of what is happening, but interventions often do not take place.”
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Here is where the 2018 research and the 2026 policy collide most directly.
The CESS study documented that in Anantapur, families already perform child marriages when financial opportunity presents itself. The decision is triggered by money, not by age or tradition alone. A family under debt, with a girl who has reached puberty, and a potential match available, will act when resources align.
Ram Mohan raises the risk that Naidu’s incentive could function as exactly that trigger.
“If the government begins offering cash incentives for larger families, there is a possibility that it could have unintended consequences, including encouraging some families to consider earlier marriages in order to access those benefits,” he said. “Whether that actually happens remains to be seen, but it is a concern that cannot be ignored.”
Poonam Muttreja, Executive Director of the Population Foundation of India, makes the same argument from a different angle. She describes how cash incentives operate inside households where financial pressure already shapes reproductive decisions.
“A man may be in debt. A man may be drinking and therefore be in debt,” she said to South First. “In such situations, people may simply think, ‘Alright, let us get this Rs 30,000.’ It could easily lead to coercion, where women are pushed into having a child for financial reasons.”
The 2018 paper recorded debt-driven child marriage as field reality in AP’s drought districts. Muttreja and Ram Mohan describe, independently, how a government cash incentive could activate the same logic at scale.
Muttreja challenges the premise that AP’s declining fertility represents a crisis requiring intervention. She prefers the NFHS-5 estimate of 1.7 over the Sample Registration System figure of 1.5, arguing the household survey methodology captures fertility behaviour more accurately. NFHS-6 now places the figure at 1.8, moving upward without any cash incentive.
More importantly, Muttreja explains how AP’s fertility decline actually happened.
“One reason Andhra Pradesh’s fertility went down is because women had two children,” she said. “They got married at 18, had two children very quickly, and the state did not coerce them.”
The unintended consequence of that programme design was that the average AP woman underwent sterilisation between the ages of 22 and 24. The fertility decline was real. So was the cost. Reversing it by loading women with financial incentives to produce more children before they build economic independence repeats the same pattern in a different direction.
“If Andhra Pradesh wants to see some balance in fertility, it first has to create a balance for women,” Muttreja said. “What women need is childcare. In a country where there is no childcare available, expecting women to have much larger families is a policy designed to fail.”
The 2018 paper found that education is the most powerful predictor of delayed marriage and smaller family size. Muttreja’s analysis confirms this from the fertility side. The conditions that brought child marriage down and the conditions that brought fertility down are the same conditions. Disrupting them to chase a demographic target risks both.
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Shantha Sinha, former chairperson of the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights, places the entire debate on a different foundation.
The question is not how to produce more children. The question is what kind of state produces women with genuine choices.
“You cannot stop child marriage unless education is made free, compulsory and accessible for every child,” she said to South First. “The focus should be on incentivising children to complete their education through scholarships and educational support, not on encouraging marriage.”
The 2018 paper said the same thing in its policy recommendations: extend free and compulsory education to age 18, because every dropout faces high risk of early marriage. Sinha says it in 2025. The paper said it in 2018. The NFHS data, across three survey rounds, confirms it through the numbers.
Sinha also challenges the demographic anxiety that drives Naidu’s announcement.
“If there is concern about declining fertility rates, the first question should be: why do we want more young people? For whose benefit?” she said. “Before talking about producing more youth, governments must explain what opportunities they are creating for the youth who already exist.”
NFHS-6 shows AP moving in the right direction on every indicator that matters for girls: child marriage down, teen pregnancy down, fertility stable. The progress took decades of education investment, awareness campaigns and, however imperfect, sustained policy attention to girls’ schooling.
A Rs 30,000 cash incentive for a third child does not build a school. It does not keep a girl in class after Class 10. It does not station a child marriage prohibition officer in Anantapur with the authority and resources to stop a marriage. It does not fix the Childline response that collapsed when NGOs handed it back to government departments.
Sinha is unsparing about what policies like this signal about how governments view women.
“It is unfair to reduce women to child-bearing instruments,” she said. “Policies that encourage higher birth rates by offering financial incentives undermine women’s dignity and agency. Women should never be viewed simply as producers of babies.”
She extends that argument to the demographic anxiety driving Naidu’s announcement. Before AP worries about producing more young people, she argues, it must answer a prior question about the young people it already has.
“Do we have a clear policy for today’s youth? Are they educated? Are they employed? Are school dropouts being supported? Are we addressing addiction, unemployment and violence among young people?” she said. “First invest in the young people we already have.”
What the cash incentive does, in a state where the 2018 research documented that families already make marriage decisions based on financial triggers, is introduce a new financial trigger into a system that has not finished solving the old ones.
One in four girls in Andhra Pradesh still marries before she turns 18. That number took decades to move from 33 percent to 25.1 percent. Three experts and seven years of field research agree on what moves it further: education, enforcement and economic security for girls.
“Treat women as human beings with dignity, choice and opportunities,” Sinha said. “Give them control over their own bodies and futures. That should be the goal of public policy.”
A cash incentive for more babies is not that goal. In the hands of a household under financial stress, it may work directly against it.
