CHILD Protection & Rights > Child Protection Issues.

Situation in India

The practice of child marriage is rampant in many parts of the country and the incidence of it is highest in the States of Rajasthan, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Chattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh. According to the 1991 Census, the percentage of married females in the total number of females in the age group 10 to 14 was 13.2 in Rajasthan, the highest in the country. In second place was Madhya Pradesh at 8.5 percent, followed by Uttar Pradesh at 7.1. For the country, the percentage of married women under the age of 18 stood at 53.3 percent.

The situation did not change substantially in the following decade. The 2001 Census reports that there are nearly 300,000 girls under 15 who have given birth to at least one child. According to the Rapid Household Survey conducted across the country, 58.9 percent of women in Bihar were married before the age of 18, with 55.5 percent in Rajasthan, 54.9 percent in West Bengal, 53.8 percent in UP and 53.2 percent in Madhya Pradesh and 39.3 percent in Karnataka. Jammu and Kashmir has the lowest percentage of under-age marriage, which is 3.4, followed by Himachal Pradesh (3.5) and Goa (4.1). Despite high female literacy in Kerala, close to one-tenth of women are married before attaining the legal age of 188 years.

National Family Health Survey (II) data suggests that the median age for the marriage of girls in India is 16.4 years. The survey also found that 65% of the girls are married by the time they are 18 years old.

In India, child marriage is a centuries old tradition, where children as young as two to three years were often married or given away in marriage. However, in traditional societies, marriages were not consummated till children were much older and were perceived to be able to understand the responsibilities intrinsic to marriage. Over time, giving children in marriage has turned into a major social evil entailing issues of child rights, sexual abuse, etc.

Child marriages have come to be used as a means to traffic young girls and women into the sex trade and labour both within the country and outside. Children are married, trafficked and sent to work in places like Delhi, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, and Kolkata.

Imbalance in the sex ratio in some states is emerging as a reason for trafficking of young girls for the purposes of marriage. In states with very low sex ratio, there is a tremendous shortage of marriageable girls, resulting in the need to buy young brides from other states. In some cases, these girls may be forced to serve as a wife to two or three brothers in the same family.