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The Union Cabinet had proposed to raise the age of marriage for women from 18 to 21 years and also listed the bill for legislative business in Parliament.

Recommendations by the committee

• Raising the age of marriage is one of its recommendations.
• A strong campaign to reform patriarchal mindsets, and improved access to education.
• Though the objective looks good on paper, merely raising the age of marriage without creating social awareness and improving access to health care is unlikely to benefit the community it wants to serve: young women not yet financially independent, who are unable to exercise their rights and freedoms while still under the yoke of familial and societal pressures.

Criticism of the legislation

• Law to prevent child marriages does not work because the marriage age at 18 was set in 1978, but child marriage started to decline only in the 1990s when the government stressed primary education of the girl child and took measures to reduce poverty.
• The experts said that often the girl child drops out after primary school simply because she has no access to higher education, and is then married off.
• Criminalization of a large number of marriages that will take place once the law comes into effect. While 23% of marriages involve brides under age 18, far more marriages take place under age 21. The median age at first marriage for women aged 20-49 is 19 years in 2015-16.
• While child marriage has declined, it has been marginal, from 27% in 2015-16 to 23% in 2019-20, according to National Family Health Survey (NFHS) 5.
• The Child Marriage Act is used by parents against eloping daughters in most of the cases. It has become a tool for parental control and for punishment of boys or men whom girls choose as their husbands.

Way Forward

• Within a patriarchal setting, it is more likely that the change in the age limit will increase parents’ authority over young adults.
• A good, but not easy, way to achieve the stated objective is to take steps to counsel girls on early pregnancies, and provide them the network to improve their health.
• The focus must be on creating social awareness about women’s sexual and reproductive health and rights, and ensuring girls are not forced to drop out of school or college. Laws cannot be a short cut in the path to social reform.
• Coercive laws without wide societal support often fail to deliver even when their statement of objects and reasons aims for the larger public good.