The Supreme Court rules that sex with a minor wife, despite consent, is rape, but activists call for a more realistic perspective to prevent child marriages and also to uphold the rights of young couples.
IT is well documented that a good percentage of Indian women get married under the age of 18, compromising their basic rights to evolve and develop as individuals. The Rapid Survey on Children commissioned by the Ministry of Women and Child Development in 2013-14 estimated that such marriages had declined from 47.4 per cent according to the National Family Health Survey-3 (2005-06) data to 30.3 per cent. The fact sheet of NFHS-4 for 2015-16 indicated that child marriages had declined to 26.8 per cent but it showed that in rural areas marriages of women below the age of 18 constituted 31.4 per cent of the total, much above the national average. The percentage of such marriages was higher than the national average among the Scheduled Castes (34.9 per cent) and the Scheduled Tribes (31 per cent). Child marriages were prevalent in nearly 44.1 per cent of families with a low wealth index, an indication that poverty was a dominant factor in child marriages.
Early marriages result in multiple child births and often are the reason for maternal mortality, infant mortality and reproductive health challenges. The application of the rule of law to prevent child marriages has been somewhat limited. A strong correlation exists between child marriages in States that have lower literacy levels for men and women in general. However, various studies have shown a stronger correlation between child marriages and poverty, indicating that the law by itself was inadequate to address the challenge unless accompanied by government interventions at multiple levels.
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