law enforcement officials should crack down on violations of The Prohibition of Child Marriage Act. Fear of the law alone will not work, but, without it, social interventions will also have little success
Sometime last week, India refused to co-sponsor a resolution in the United Nations Human Rights Council that called for an end to the practice of child marriage. The refusal shocked civil rights activists in the country and elsewhere, because only days before the resolution came before the UN body, New Delhi had enthusiastically supported the document. Officials offered many unconvincing explanations for the turnaround, including that the resolution had left the term, “early marriage” as vague. The Ministry for External Affairs spokesperson added, though, that India “supported the objectives of the resolution”. Unfortunately, because the development has created little buzz in the television-driven news media, the Government has got away without much public opprobrium.
If the country did indeed support the objectives, why did it fail to co-sponsor itIJ By doing so, it has send across a negative message that we are not willing to bite the bullet. India has the world’s largest number of child brides — 24 million — and among the worst records in punishing the perpetrators of the crime. After all, child marriage is expressly illegal. The Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, 2006, which came into effect from January 10, 2007, provides for rigorous imprisonment up to two years or a fine of one lakh rupees or both to those who perform, conduct, direct or abet child marriage. Yet, we have not heard of many cases, if at all there have been some, where people have been hauled up even, let alone convicted, for the crime. This is strange given that child marriages happen in the country almost every day.
The proliferation of child marriage is especially worrisome in the case of the girl child. According to statistics, nearly half of all girls are married before they turn the legal age of 18. In States such as Bihar, the situation is worse. Close to 70 per cent of the girls are married off before they reach 18 years of age, while 48 per cent are made to tie the knot before they turn 15 years of age. Experts estimate that by 2030, more than 130 million young girls in South Asia will be married early. A large, indeed the majority, number will come from India.
One had expected that the grim reality would have driven New Delhi to co-own the UN resolution. After all, several countries such as South Sudan, Yemen, Honduras and Ethiopia — all having a high child marriage figure — have adopted the document to demonstrate their commitment to tackling the social evil. By contrast, many South Asian countries such as Pakistan, Nepal, Sri lanka and Bangladesh, along with India, did not co-sponsor the move.
Nobel laureate and social activist Archbishop Desmond Tutu had in an interview more than a year ago remarked that only a concerted and coordinated effort by political, religious, village community and business leaders can reverse the situation in India. He pointed out that even the GDP growth rate would spiral upward if the latent power of an empowered female class were to be unleashed. But that wouldn’t be possible if girls keep getting pushed into early marriages, thereby thwarting progress in their education and health, and aborting their contribution to social growth.
The legal machinery in the country has failed to rise to the occasion for a variety of reasons. While one of them certainly is the apathy of the civil administration and the police, there are social factors that have played a bigger role. It’s easy for commentators in the electronic and print media to blame all ills on the ‘mindset’ of the patriarchal class that has a stranglehold on society. But non-Government organisations, who have been working at the grassroots levels and interacting with people, will tell a different story which is closer to reality. let’s begin with the basic question: Why would parents want to marry off their less-than-18-year-old daughter, even when they know that doing so is a crimeIJ The answers are many and they hold the key to developing a meaningful intervention. The first is that the parents may be too poor. They realise that the more they delay the girl’s marriage the more dowry they will have to end up paying. Poverty also leads the parents to get rid of an extra mouth to feed.
The second reason is peer pressure. Village societies even today frown upon cases where, for instance, 17-year old girls remain unmarried. All sorts of stories get circulated against the girl and her parents. Early marriage is a way out to pre-empt such fate. Village elders also raise the spectacle of the girl going ‘haywire’ if she remains unmarried after she has ‘developed the physical faculties’. Finally, given the unsafe environment (rising incidents of sexual assault) that girls and women find themselves in, parents are unwilling to take chances and prefer to discharge their ‘responsibility’ at the earliest. All these issues need to be addressed if change has to come about.
The biggest casualty in all this is the education and the health of the girl child. The strongest incentive for a delayed marriage is education. In many families and village groups, the theory is gaining ground that a sound education for girls will help the parents in finding a good match for her, without their having to pay a large dowry. But this has unfortunately not caught on at the massive scale it should, and one reason for that is the lack of accessibility to higher learning for girls in rural India. There is also the issue of safety as the girls travel distances to get educated.
Then, there are documented instances of a child bride ending up with physical complications during pregnancy and after. Children are still-born or severely malnourished. It’s worse for the mother (still a child herself) if the new-born is a girl.
This brings us to the vicious circle that engulfs the issue of girl child marriage. It’s a mistake to consider the problem in isolation. As presentations that were recently made at an event organised by an NGO, Breakthrough, in Delhi, demonstrated, girl child marriage is in many ways linked to a host of issues such as gender discrimination, malnutrition, infant mortality rate, dowry, domestic violence and poor levels of education among females. While it’s not the argument that early marriage alone is responsible for all the problems, it undeniably is a major factor. The presence of a law against child marriage does not make the related issues disappear.
The Government and social activists must collaborate to create synergy between the multiple departments, ranging from education to health to social welfare, and have a holistic plan of action, to tackle child marriages. Meanwhile, law enforcement officials should shed their lethargy and prejudice and crack down on violators of the Act. Fear of the law alone will not work, but, without it, social interventions will also have little success.