For a considerable section of the female population in India “life ends before they have wings to fly”. This is predominantly because girls are married at a tender age, and to be precise, before they have attained the childbearing stage. When the state of female empowerment in India was witnessing positive growth, COVID-19 hit it hard, making things stand at a dismal state once again.
Sheetal of Purnia district, Bihar, is the daughter of a migrant who works in the capital. Like many others, her father is the sole earning member of the family. Her dad had to return to his village due to the ongoing lockdown and it hit the family hard.
Sheetal no longer goes to the Anganwadi School where she received a basic education and mid-day meal to satisfy hunger and scrap off her family’s responsibility to provide her lunch. After losing a job and finding no work in the village, her father decided to get her married to another migrant’s son. She is just 16 (below the minimum legal age of marriage), yet, was forced to marry in this uncertain situation because her parents believe the union will help the two families in the long run.
Such instances are not rare. Kinju, another girl aged just 13 from the Birbhum district of West Bengal, was married to a man double her age during the interim lockdown period. This marriage, as the fellow villagers of the family say, “was pending for a long time”.
This sudden occasion had to be completed in a hurry as it was a decision through divine call. For these people, abiding by the minimum age of marriage was irrelevant. All that mattered was the divine call and not succumbing to hard times that COVID-19 had brought with it.
Both Sheetal and Kinju, as described by their respective Anganwadi School authorities, were bright students. Although too young to dream too big a career, they both had certain dreams that went beyond getting married so soon at a tender age. Instances such as these pinpoint a pertinent question — does the minimum age of marriage for girls have any relevance in our country? Should the Government raise the age level to 21 from 18 for girls, or should it also think of stricter measures to stop rural families from forcing girls to marry at a tender age?
Credit: Girls Not Brides
As reported by National Family Health Survey data, as many as 26.8% of girls in rural India are married below the legal age nationally. These unreported cases, therefore, indicate taking proactive measure not just to raise the minimum legal age of marriage to 21, but also make adolescents and youth self-reliant.
The Indian Government justifies the move stating, “Raise in the age limit will solve the issue of rising Maternal Mortality Rate (MMR) and bring parity (age of marriage) among the two sexes.” The broader vision of the Indian Government is to boost women workforce participation levels from the current 18%. The Government is also committed to empowering women through entrepreneurship schemes such as Mahila Udyam Nidhi, Annapurna, Stree Shakti Package, and others to make women self-reliant and upscale the economic state of the country.
It is projected that empowering women in India through entrepreneurship programs alone will help increase about 150 million to 170 million jobs in India. Further, increasing the level of women workforce participation by just 10% by 2025 will result in an increase of $770 billion in India’s GDP growth trajectory. These numbers will work only if women in India are offered adequate opportunities to skill themselves and add value in their desired work area.