Interlinkages of poverty and child marriages in India

  • Poverty is the main reason behind early marriages in rural areas as most families have large family sizes.
  • With such families, most parents are unable or unwilling to take care of their children.
  • Early marriages are therefore seen as opportunities to reduce this burden.
  • Others who cannot feed or send their children to school, give young girls off marriage to older men.
  • Some parents arrange marriages between their children and their creditors as a way of settling debts.
  • Without the safety net of schools, the girl child being forced into marriage is cut off from any possible communication with a teacher or counselor.
  • Most of them do not have access to child helplines though the government has set these us.
  • There was 88 percent increase in child marriages across the country in August 2020 as compared to August 2019, as per a reply by Union Ministry of Women and Child Development to a RTI sought by Rajya Sabha MP.
  • Many people in India have lost their jobs and life savings during the pandemic. This has forced parents to marry off their daughters at an early age to reduce the financial burden.
  • Apart from poverty, weak law enforcement, patriarchal norms and concern about family honor are factors contributing to early marriage during the COVID- 19 pandemic.
  • West Bengal is one of the five states in India that have a high prevalence of early marriages. Though 12% of girls between 15 and 19 years of age are married off nationally, in West Bengal the figure stands at 25.6%.
  • Madhya Pradesh recorded 46 child marriages between November 2019 and March 2020, a figure that that jumped to 117 in just three months of the lockdown from April to June 2020, data provided by ChildLine India
  • According to ChildLine India, across India 5,214 child marriages were reported in the first four months of lockdown between March to June.
  • UNICEF has said that in Madhya Pradesh where child marriages are a constant challenge, economic pressures due to the pandemic has pushed poor parents to marry off girls early.
  • As many as 204 child marriages were performed in 25 out of 33 districts in Telangana during the lockdown period from March 24 to May 31 in 2020.