CRY – Child Rights and You welcomes and appreciate the initiative of the Government of India to set up a task force that will look into matters pertaining to legal age of marriage and early motherhood with respect to health, nutrition and education prospects for adolescent girls and the mortality rates of both the mother and the child. It’s certainly a forward-looking step which recognises that as India progresses further, more opportunities open up for girls to pursue higher education and careers. Moreover, it will help the nation adopt new effective strategies for lowering MMR as well as improvement of nutrition levels and other related issues.
Ms Nirmala Sitharaman, the honourable Union Finance Minister, during her Budget speech FY 2020-21, emphasised on appointing a task force within six months, which would be working towards revisiting these aspects.
While child marriage negatively impacts both boys and girls as it ends their childhood and deprives them of their rights to education, health and protection, it disproportionately affects the girl child. A girl who is married as a child is more likely to be out of school, not capable of earning and contributing to her family and the community – hence is more likely to experience domestic violence. She is more likely to have children when she is still a child, and not ready – both physically and mentally – to become a mother. There are more chances of her dying due to complications during pregnancy and childbirth. This contributes to higher infant and maternal mortality rates as well.
Further, girls married as children lack required skills, knowledge and job prospects needed to lift their families out of poverty and contribute to the country’s social and economic growth. Early marriage leads girls to have children earlier and more children over their lifetime, increasing economic burden on the household. Thus, Child marriage affects the Indian economy and can lead to an intergenerational cycle of poverty. CRY once again appreciates this step as the organisation sees this as an opportunity to develop interventions that support adolescent girls in ensuring healthy, nutritional status of girls before pregnancy, continued schooling and life skill education, and skilling opportunities to break the cycle of early motherhood and consequent inter-generational malnutrition.
We also call for proactive and meaningful participation from the civil society coalitions and organisations to support the task force in establishing the correlation of child marriage and age of motherhood with health and nutritional status of the mother and the child. It will also help all concerned stake holders to understand ground realities while adopting measures for promoting higher education among girls with suitable legislative instruments and/or amendments in existing legislations.
