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Increase in Age of Marriage Blog

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6 views3 pages

Increase in Age of Marriage Blog

Uploaded by

Harsh Srivastava
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Increase in age of marriage

Blog

The Union Cabinet's Proposal for bringing uniformity within the marriageable
age of men and ladies is certainly a progressive step to know Goal 5 of the
SDGs which asks nation-states to formulate policies to understand gender
equality. However, good intent doesn't guarantee favourable outcomes.
Coercive laws without wide societal support often fail to deliver even when
their statement of objects and reasons aims for the larger public good.

Experts are opposing a raised age of marriage on two broad counts. First, the
law to stop child marriages doesn't work. While child marriage has declined,it
has been marginal: from 27% in 2015-16 to 23% in 2019-20, consistent with
National Family Health Survey (NFHS) 5. The second objection being raised is
that the criminalisation of an outsized number of marriages which may
happen once the law comes into effect. While 23% of marriages involve brides
under age 18, much more marriages happen under age 21 .

The decrease was, however, dramatic in NFHS 4, from 47% in NEHS 3.The
marriage age at 18 was set in 1978, but child marriage began to mention no
only within the 1990s, when the govt stressed primary education of the girl
child and took measures to scale back poverty. The experts said girls being
taken out of college to be married off could even be a reasoning blown out of
proportion; often the girl child drops out after grammar school just because
she has no access to education , and is then married off. .

Experts noted that 70% of early marriages happen in deprived communities


like SCs and STs, and said the law will simply push these marriages
underground rather than preventing them. consistent with NFHS 4 (2015-16),
the median age initially marriage for girls aged 25-49 is higher among the
social categories of Others (19.5 years), OBC (18.5), ST (18.4) and SC (18.1).

According to the State of the earth Report 2020 by UNFPA, in India, 51% of
young women with no education and 47% of these with only a primary
education had married by age 18, compared to 29% of young women with a
education and 4% with post-secondary education. The Union Cabinet on
(December 15) took the choice to boost the majority of marriage for girls from
18 to 21 years. With this decision, the govt. are becoming to be bringing the
age of marriage for both men and ladies at par.

The proposal to boost the majority for the wedding of girls carries “enormous”
economic and social gains for India, consistent with a depository financial
institution of India report. The report counts benefits like lowering maternal
deaths and improving nutrition levels within the near term to putting more
girls in college and enabling women to know greater financial independence
within the top of the day .
Marriage laws in India

Personal laws of varied religions that affect marriage have their own standards,
often reflecting custom. For Hindus and Christians: The Hindu Marriage Act,
1955 and thus the Indian Christian Marriage Act, 1872 sets 18 years because
the minimum age for the bride and 21 years because the minimum age for the
groom. Islam: the wedding of a minor who has attained puberty is taken into
account valid consistent with the Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) Application
Act, 1937. Now, the govt. will need to amend the Prohibition of kid Marriage
Act, 2006, the Special Marriage Act and private laws slightly a bit like the
Hindu Marriage Act, 1955.

Roots back in history of India

Child marriage are often found in traditional epic stories and may be a
practice that dates back to India’s ancient period. Children as young as six or
eight were married within the medieval period. People believed that
understanding and affection would increase if two people know one another
from childhood, then they were married off at younger age – although the girl
would accept her parents until she reached the age of puberty.

The same trend continued and resulted during a practice named Atta Satta
which is popular in Tonk and Bikaner in Rajasthan. it's a practice of
exchanging a daughter reciprocally for a daughter-in-law in marriage to their
son. the rationale for the emergence of this practice seems to be a decline
within the amount of women . If a family cannot find a bride for his or her son,
they exchange their daughter reciprocally for a woman from another family.

“In Atta Satta, the girl could even be married off at a younger age, but the
gauna – the ceremony of sending the girl to her marital house – is performed
only after she is physically mature or attains puberty,” said a priest from
Rajasthan, who didn't want to be named.

This means the girl is married off at a really early age, “sometimes even at the
age of 4 to 5 years”.”

In June 2020, the Ministry of WCD acknowledged a task force to seem into
the correlation between the age of marriage with problems with women’s
nutrition, prevalence of anemia, IMR, MMR and other social indices.
The committee was to seem at the feasibility of accelerating the age of
marriage and its implication on women and child health, also because the
thanks to increase access to education for girls .

Reasons behind the choice .

Gender-neutrality: With this decision, the govt. are becoming to be bringing


the age of marriage for both men and ladies at par.
Motherhood complexities: An early age of marriage, and consequent early
pregnancies, even have impacts on nutritional levels of mothers and their
children, and their overall health and mental wellbeing.

Mother and Child Mortality: It also has an impression on infant deathrate


Rate and Maternal deathrate .

Women empowerment: the choice would empower women who are stop from
access to education and livelihood because of an early marriage.

Challenges in raising the majority of marriage for girls

Illegal marriages: Such legislation would push an outsized portion of the


population into illegal marriages resulting in non-institutional births.

Ineffectiveness of existing laws: Decrease in child marriages has not been


thanks to the prevailing law but thanks to a rise in girls’ education and
employment opportunities.

Unnecessary coercion: The law would find yourself being coercive, and
particularly negatively impact marginalized communities, slightly a bit like the
Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribes, making them law-breakers.

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