This year, in his Independence Day speech, the Prime Minister repeated Finance Minister Sitharaman’s call for the minimum legal age of marr...
This year, in his Independence Day speech, the Prime Minister repeated Finance Minister Sitharaman’s call for the minimum legal age of marriage for women to be increased from 18 years to 21 years as a means of “lowering the maternal mortality and improving nutrition levels”. Global and Indian evidence – rather than rhetoric – argues that this is not feasible. Such a move will not affect maternal mortality or nutrition and there are more effective ways of empowering women that respect reproductive rights.
The numbers are enormous, and our record in curbing marriages below age 18 years (the current legal minimum age for marriage) has been abysmal, even 40 years after the enactment of the current Prohibition of Child Marriage Act.
For example, the proportion of women aged 20 years to 24 years who had been married when they were below the age of 18 years – the preferred and globally used indicator of child marriage – was 54% in 1992-’93, 50% in 1998-’99 and 47% in 2005-’06. It fell impressively only in the last decade, between 2005-’06 and 2015-’16. Even so, this means roughly 1.5 crore young girls were married as children, in violation of the law. Despite these huge numbers, hardly any...
