Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Dec 16: The legal marriage age of women in India will soon be raised from the present 18 years to 21 years. Based on the recommendations of four-member committee, the government has decided to raise the legal marriage age of women to put them at par with men for whom the marriageable age presently is 21 years.
The union cabinet at its meeting on Wednesday had cleared the proposal to bring in uniformity in the marriageable age of men and women and decided to bring a bill in the current winter session of Parliament to give effect to the measure by amending the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, 2006, official sources said on Thursday. The proposed bill may also seek to make consequential changes to various personal laws relating to marriage of various communities to ensure a uniform marriage age, the sources said.
The Narendra Modi government had decided to re-examine the age of marriage for women for a number of reasons, including gender-neutrality. An early age of marriage, and consequent early pregnancies, also have impacts on nutritional levels of mothers and their children, and their overall health and mental wellbeing. It also has an impact on Infant Mortality Rate and Maternal Mortality Rate, and the empowerment of women who are cut off from access to education and livelihood after an
early marriage.
The decision came a year after Modi had said the government was deliberating on what should be the minimum age for marriage of women. The decision is based on the recommendation of a four-member task force led by former Samata Party chief Jaya Jaitly.
Speaking about the recommendation, Jaitly said there were two main reasons on which the committee focused on. “If we talk about gender equity and gender empowerment in every field, then we can’t leave marriage out because this is a very odd message that girl can be fit to be married at 18 that cuts away her opportunity to go to college and the man has the opportunity to prepare himself for life and earning up to 21. But these days when girls are capable of doing so much and the main reason why they are married off is because they are not an income earning member of the family but why do we allow them that feeling,” she said.
“We should give them an opportunity to earn and be equal to a man and she can’t become equal at 18 when man has 21 years to do that. Secondly, we took opinions from lots of people but the main people who were most attentive were stakeholders themselves. We conducted assessment calls with young people – universities, colleges and in rural areas where they are still at school or getting out of school and the unanimous opinion of stakeholders was the marriageable age to be 22 or 23. Across all religions everyone had the same opinion which was a very heartening thing,” she said.
Jaitly said the task force submitted its recommendations to the PMO, Women and Child Development Ministry and NITI Aayog last December. The other members in the panel included Dr. V.K. Paul, member (Health) NITI Aayog, secretaries of higher education, school education, health, women and child development, legislative department apart from academicians Najma Akhtar, Vasudha Kamat and Dipti Shah.
The need for enacting a law to keep a minimum age for marriage was mainly aimed at preventing child marriage and prevent abuse of minors. Personal laws of various religions that deal with marriage have their own standards, often reflecting custom.
For Hindus, The Hindu Marriage Act, 1955 sets 18 years as the minimum age for the bride and 21 years as the minimum age for the groom. In Islam, the marriage of a minor who has attained puberty is considered valid.
The Special Marriage Act, 1954 and the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, 2006 also prescribe 18 and 21 years as the minimum age of consent for marriage for women and men, respectively. For the new age of marriage to be implemented, these laws will have to be amended to give effect to the government’s decision for the upward revision of marriageable age for girls.
The Modi government’s decision to re-visit the minimum age for marriage of women was in contradiction to the recently released National Family Health Survey (NFHS) which revealed that the malpractices of child marriage had only come down marginally from 27 per cent in 2015-16 to 23 per cent in 2019-20 in the country. The government was keen to bring it further down to tide over the social malpractice but raising the legal marriageable age of women could only defeat the purpose.
The Jaya Jaitley committee was appointed in June 2020 by the Union Ministry for Women and Child Development to look into the correlation between the age of marriage with issues of women’s nutrition, prevalence of anemia, IMR, MMR and other social indices.
The committee was to look at the feasibility of increasing the age of marriage and its implication on women and child health, as well as how to increase access to education for women. The committee was to also recommend a timeline by which the government could roll out the implementation of the policy, as well as the amendments that would need to be made in existing laws in order for this to happen.
The committee has recommended the age of marriage be increased to 21 years, on the basis of feedback they received from young adults from 16 universities across the country. Over 15 NGOs were also engaged to reach out to young adults in far-flung areas and marginalised communities. Committee members have said feedback has been taken from youth belonging to all religions, as well as from rural and urban areas equally.
The committee also asked the government to look into increasing access to schools and colleges for girls, including their transportation to these institutes from far-flung areas. Skill and business training has also been recommended, as has sex education in schools.
The committee said these deliveries must come first, as, unless they are implemented and women are empowered, the law will not be as effective. The committee has further recommended that an awareness campaign be undertaken on a massive scale on the increase in age of marriage, and to encourage social acceptance of the new legislation, which they have said would be far more effective than coercive measures.
Child and women’s rights activists, as well as population and family planning experts have not been in favour of increasing the age of marriage for women on the basis that such a legislation would push a large portion of the population into illegal marriages.
They have contended that even with the legal age of marriage for women being kept at 18 years, child marriages continue in India and a decrease in such marriages has not been because of the existing law but because of increase in girl’s education and employment opportunities.
They have said the law would end up being coercive, and in particular negatively impact marginalised communities, such as the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribes making them law-breakers in the present scenario where the parents become too keen to marry their daughters as soon as they attain puberty or, if possible, even earlier.