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The challenge of curbing child marriage

Poornima Advani

A more comprehensive law and better enforcement are key to checking child marriage. Compulsory registration of all marriages will also help.

IT IS not surprising that the report of 13-year-old Renuka, a seventh standard student in Andhra Pradesh's Medak district, escaping a marriage foisted on her by parents from both families made headlines. It is rare that young girls escape the noose of early matrimony despite a law prohibiting child marriage being in existence for 75 years — The Child Marriage Restraint Act, 1929. It is rarer still that the rescue is made by a police officer. The sad reality is that on Akha Teej or Akshaya Tritiya, hundreds of girls, some toddlers, are married off to grooms not much older, in collective ceremonies performed under the very nose of law enforcement agencies and not uncommonly with the benign blessings of the local VIPs including legislators.

The fight of Renuka was as rare as was the help of sub-inspector Prabhakar. They both deserve our salute.

The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Law and Justice has tabled its report on the Prevention of Child Marriage Bill 2004. It is also time to recall the exercises by numerable NGOs and social activists and the National Commissions for Women and on Human Rights to bring about changes in the law with regard to this social evil that has degraded the status of the girl child in our society.

As happens to all efforts concerned with entrenched customs and practices, the law has been slow to move. The implementation machinery has been even slower in enforcing the law. The 1929 Act comprising a bare 11 sections, though a major social reform law, has always had an ambivalent attitude on whether to enforce what is rational or to compromise with the reality. This ambivalence has naturally affected the enforcement machinery as well as society's perception of the role of custom, on the one hand, and law, on the other.

The central issue in child marriage revolves around the age below which marriage should be prohibited. This age has been redefined from time to time in tune with the evolving social norms beginning with 12 years in the original 1929 statute. It today stands at 18 for girls and 21 for boys. While the progression of the law concerning age has been in one direction so far, we suddenly have the recommendation of the Parliamentary Committee for revising the age for males from 21 to 18 years. Much has been made in this respect of the definition of `child' under the Indian Penal Code, the Representation of the People Act, the Indian Contract Act, and the Indian Majority Act or the Prohibition Acts of various States. It is argued that since youth of 18 years are considered eligible to partake of the bottle and enter the polling booth, why should they not be considered fit to take a bride? At the other end of the spectrum is the so-called pragmatic argument that since the breach of law for underage marriage is so rampant, why not bring down the bar so that enforcement will be more manageable.

It cannot be overemphasised that the purpose of law is to enforce rational behaviour and to penalise breach rather than to legitimise the absurd and the irrational. So far as the argument relating to the discrepancy in various laws concerning the age for men and women is concerned, lawmaking is not an exercise in equating different things. The age for marriage has to consider both physical and mental development, on the one hand, and, even more importantly, a young man's economic ability to support a family, on the other. Equally relevant is the social norm in all societies, across time and space, of accepting a certain age difference between men and women entering into matrimony.

It is an incontrovertible fact that a large number of marriages are performed in violation of the existing provisions of the law. It is also true that there is a large body of social opinion and customary practice that sanctions early marriage. Even economic factors may often weigh in favour of a family's decision to marry the girl child off early before the cost of marriage, including dowry, goes beyond their means. But all these factors only underscore the scale of the problem and emphasise the need for a comprehensive strategy for tackling the issue in all its facets.

These can hardly be the arguments for watering down the law. There is everything to be said for gradually increasing the age of marriage for both boys and girls in line with social advancement and economic realities, not to mention the exploding population problem facing countries like ours.

To take up first things first, the law must make registration of all marriages mandatory. This will take care of not only the issue of checking child marriage but also help in `proving' the fact of marriage in cases relating to bigamy and adultery in a court of law. Considering the prevailing realities in our countryside, the provisions of registration need to be implemented in as informal, simple, and user-friendly a manner as possible. The facilities for registration will need to be provided at the lowest rung of our administrative structures namely the village patwari or the gram sevak in rural areas and at the municipal ward or thana level in the urban setting.

The Parliamentary Committee's recommendation on making the offence of child marriage both cognisable and non-bailable is entirely in line with the recommendations of every committee or conference on the subject. The present legal framework has made the law a non-starter. The tentacles of the law must also reach out to all those who attend or participate in such marriages, giving them both sanctity as well as social recognition. The refusal of relatives, priests, and other socially important persons to participate in such marriages for fear of punishment can act as the most effective deterrent.

Crime and punishment

Stringency of punishment is the next important element in the strategy to tackle this menace. The present provision for simple imprisonment for three months and a fine has proved totally inadequate. The Parliamentary Committee's recommendation for increasing the sentence to two years is quite salutary.

However, it is a lesson from all social legislation that what matters most in curbing crime is the speed and certainty of punishment rather than the term and rigour of the sentence. And it is here that we meet with the greatest challenge, what with a gender-insensitive police machinery, a wayward prosecution, and a serpentine adjudication process.

At the base of the enforcement pyramid is the overworked thana and its general purpose constable who is too torn between law and order bandobast and grave crimes to find the time and the will for enforcing the law against child marriage. What is needed is a focussed approach at this base level where either separate Child Marriage Prevention Officers need to be appointed or duty needs to be cast on credible NGOs to report or even intervene with the help of the official machinery or other social workers. Such a focussed approach must be put in place at least in vulnerable districts. Needless to say, that enforcement is not only a matter of numbers or designation of the personnel but also a question of their knowledge, skills, and values. These can be inculcated through a large-scale gender sensitisation exercise for the police forces and the NGOs alike.

A related social malaise is child marriage linked trafficking. Many a girl child is forced into a marriage after kidnapping and maybe after sexual abuse. This calls for an even more stringent and sensitive enforcement of the Child Marriage Restraint Act in conjunction with the Immoral Traffic Prevention Act particularly in border areas and States, which have become high receiving zones for trafficked children.

Another variant of this social evil is the muttah marriage prevalent in several States where child brides are sold to foreign tourists in contract marriages for a predetermined sum and period. This `trade' involves paltry gain for the parents or guardians of the girl children and high stakes for the pimps and middlemen who are involved in these rackets of exploitation, coercion, and fraud. Compulsory registration of all marriages and strict enforcement of the law will help curb such practices to a large extent.

Above all, it is to be hoped that, the Committee having concluded its labours, Parliament will soon legislate a new law and allow millions of girls to enjoy their childhood before motherhood is thrust on them.

(The writer is a former Chairperson of the National Commission for Women.)

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