“If we can vote as 18-year-olds, why can’t we get married at 18?” asks Heena, a third-year undergrad student at Delhi University. Heena is one of the young women who participated in a dialogue with the task force set up by the Union government to examine the correlation of age of marriage and motherhood. “Marriage should be a woman’s choice,” she says. Living in an urban resettlement colony in Delhi, the 19-year-old is aware of the implications of raising the minimum age of marriage for women from 18 to 21. PM Narendra Modi made this announcement in his Independence Day speech on August 15, sparking a debate in civil society.
During his speech, the PM said a committee had been formed and a task force notified, adding that their reviews were expected to come out soon. However, not everybody agrees with the government’s argument that the move will enhance women’s access to higher education, besides improving the infant mortality rate and the maternal mortality ratio. Heena points out that a higher age of marriage is not sufficient to ensure that young women like her have the opportunity for higher education. For example, she wanted to pursue a degree in law, but had to drop the idea as she couldn’t avail an education loan.
Moreover, increasing the legal age for marriage wouldn’t solve the root causes for underage marriages—poverty, and lack of access to education and employment. “Backward communities and the poor usually don’t have enough money to send their children to school, so they sit at home until they are 18,” says Heena. “When parents have some money in hand, they try to marry off their daughter. Now the government is asking them to wait for three more years instead of addressing the real problems by measures such as extending free education till Class 12 and creating conditions that enable easy access to loans for education.”
Many young women endorse this view, and it is echoed in a report, Young Voices: National Working Group, put together by 96 civil society organisations in response to the task force. These organisations roped in 2,500 young people across 15 states to get their view on the issue. The problem lies somewhere else, say the youngsters in one voice. One of the main demands in the report was for comprehensive intervention by the task force to address the underlying issues—access to and incentives for education, job creation, sex education, healthcare, nutrition etc—instead of increasing the age of marriage.
Mary E. John, a senior fellow at the Centre for Women’s Development Studies (CWDS), says it’s not desirable to tamper with the legal age of marriage as it’s in tandem with global standards. “Globally, 18 years is accepted as the age of adulthood. As an adult, you can vote, buy and sell property, and enter into a contract. So why can’t you decide on your personal life at 18?” asks John, who has also presented a memorandum to the task force.
Experts also say that the efficiency of existing laws needs to be examined before changing them. Madhu Mehra, a founding member of Partners for Law in Development, says the debate should be on reviewing the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, 2012. Citing a study by her organisation on underage marriage cases from 2008 to 2017 in India, she says most cases were initiated by parents against marriages self-arranged by their daughters. In these cases, the husband may be jailed for up to 20 years under POCSO. “A large number of consenting couples, even those who are married, are being prosecuted under POCSO. If the man is punished at 20, he will be 40 when he comes out of jail. Data shows this is happening widely. The change in age of marriage will also criminalise sexual activity of young people below 21 years,” says Mehra. In sharp contrast, parents who forcibly marry off their daughter can be jailed for a maximum of two years under the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act (PCMA), 2006.
Activists are also apprehensive of the reasons behind the move to raise the marriage age because statistics on child marriages in India are not showing any worrying trends. The latest National Family Health Survey (NFHS 4) of 2015-16 shows a drastic decline—almost by 50 per cent—in the percentage of underage marriages compared to 2005-06. The move is also seen as a population control measure as promised by the PM in his 2019 Independence Day speech. However, John says that data shows fertility rates plummeting over the years. “I think there is an ideological mindset at work, which is not about facts. It was always about population control. In 1978, women’s age of marriage was increased from 15 to 18 years by amending the Sharda Act of 1929,” she adds.
While some hail it as a progressive move towards gender equality, activists and young women choose to differ. R. Sharmila, a 22-year-old from Madurai, says that raising the marriage age is a small step towards gender equality, but there are bigger battles to fight. “There is deep-rooted patriarchy and we need to fight that,” adds the final-year student of Masters in Social Work. Conceding that a higher legal age of marriage could mean an opportunity for girls to study more, it could, paradoxically, also lead to more child marriages. “As parents marry off their daughters believing it is for their protection, they may wait till they are 18, but not till they are 21,” she explains.
Kavita Ratna, director of advocacy at a child rights non-profit, The Concerned for Working Children, had conceived the idea of the Young Voices report and says the delaying of marriage without addressing underlying issues will lead to new challenges such as an increase in female foeticide cases. Although the government claims that a higher threshold age would be a boon for both maternal and child health, Ratna says it will only have adverse impacts. “During our survey, many girls felt that the delaying of marriage doesn’t automatically increase opportunities. One told me that women would be a bigger burden for their parents in three years,” she adds.
Payal, a 16-year-old from Odisha’s Koraput district, feels increasing the legal age of marriage is a good step as women would be more prepared psychologically and physically to bear the responsibility of marriage and children. “By 21, women will have better reproductive health. But this would be a futile exercise if the government doesn’t provide the means for higher education and job opportunities,” she says.
Along with economic independence, delaying of marriage is said to bring greater freedom of marital choice as well as reproductive freedom. Activists, however, point out that this perception is based on a distortion of the cause-effect relationship. “We think that a woman will be better off by delaying marriage as marriage age tends to be higher among better-off groups. The marriage markets of middle-class India demand higher education and a higher standard of living, which go hand-in-hand with higher ages of marriage,” says John. “This is where the biggest confusion lies.”
