PM's call for revision in girls age to marry: Here is what data tells us

Although there is ambiguity in available data, trends suggest that in nearly one-third of marriages in India women are aged less than 21

In his seventh Independence Day speech, prime minister Narendra Modi stressed upon several aspects about the development of women in India. He also specifically indicated his government’s resolve to revise the minimum age at which women can legally tie the knot in India.

“We have formed a committee to ensure that the daughters are no longer suffering from malnutrition and they are married off at the right age. As soon as the report is submitted, appropriate decisions will be taken about the age of marriage of daughters,” he said from the ramparts of the Red Fort in Delhi.

The reality about marriages in India is indeed stark. Women get married before they complete 18 only in 1-3 per cent of marriages. But while men mostly get married after they cross the age of 21, one-third of women were below 21 at the time of marriage, according to data by India’s Sample Registration System (SRS). SRS is an annual nationwide survey that covered 8 million Indians that year.

However, another government survey paints a completely different picture. The most recent survey data available in India (National Family Health Survey - 4, 2015-16) shows that child marriage — before women complete 18 years of age—is still rampant in India. About 27 per cent of women between 20 and 24 had got married before they completed 18 years of age. At the global level, this proportion is higher than that in Iran and Pakistan, according to UNICEF data.

In developed countries, legal age for marriage for men as well as women is 18, as is the threshold set by the United Nations. But Modi’s remarks are especially important in the light of the fact that one-third of child marriages in the world take place in India.

The National Family Health Survey (NFHS-4) found in 2015-16 that 26.8 per cent women in the age bracket 20-24 were married before they completed 18 years of age. Child marriage was, nonetheless, less prevalent in 2015-16, than the 50 per cent prevalence in 2005-06. The 2018-19 version of the survey, or NFHS-5, is yet to be released. NFHS-4 covered half a million households in 2015-16.

In early 20th century, child marriage was rampant, and women used to get married at quite an early age in India. The Sarda Act of 1930 put a floor on legal age for marriage at 14 for women, and at 18 for men.

“Social determinants of child marriage are indicative of a patriarchal system that prevents women from obtaining an education, earning a livelihood, and becoming productive citizens,” a 2018 paper by Rajeev Seth and others noted.

The Child Marriage Restraint Act changed the legal age of consent to marriage at 18 for women and 21 for men in 1978. The Act labelled all marriages happening prior to attaining these ages as “child marriage,” punishable under law.

A decade later in 1990, the effective mean age at marriage for Indian women had risen to 19.3. It has now further risen to 22.3 in 2018, according the SRS data.

But the range of average age of marriage goes from 21 to 26 across states. In that regard, women in Jammu & Kashmir marry latest among all states. In general, women in villages marry later than national average in northern hilly states and southern states of Kerala and Tamil Nadu. Largely rural states such as Madhya Pradesh show early average age at marriage for women.

In cities, the average age at which women get married is higher than that in the rural India. Even in urban areas, it is women in J&K and Himachal Pradesh who thwart early marriage.

A 2015 district level survey on child marriage found out the drivers of child marriage. Educational facilities beyond primary schooling near the village, concentration of marginalised communities, infrastructure such as electricity and primary health, and accessibility are the chief reasons people still cling to age-old customs, the survey by International Center for Research on Women and UNICEF found.

Research by Akanksha Marphatia and others published in 2017 suggests that strong public health infrastructure, and doing away with “weak political recognition” of child marriage is critical to end the prevalence.

The data for men’s mean age at marriage is not available in these publications. But a task force set up by the erstwhile Manmohan Singh government, had recommended in its 2015 report that laws governing age at marriage should apply equally to the two majority genders.

“There should be a move towards bringing uniformity in laws regarding age at marriage,” the Report of the High Level Committee on Status of Women noted in 2015.

The Modi government set up a task force in June 2020 to examine matters pertaining to age of motherhood, imperatives of lowering maternal mortality, and improvement of nutritional levels of women, which is supposed to submit its report soon.