By IANS,
Bhopal : Akshay Tritiya which falls on Sunday is considered by Hindus to be an auspicious day for marriages – even child marriages – and Madhya Pradesh is pulling out all stops to ensure that that there is no repeat of last year, when 20,000 children were married off.
To check the menace, the state Principal Secretary (Women and Child Development) Loveleen Kakkad has written letters to district collectors instructing them to take firm action to prevent child marriages.
Every district collector in Madhya Pradesh has been declared a child marriage prevention officer.
In Madhya Pradesh, as also in Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, weddings of many children below the age of 18 are solemnized on Akshay Trithiya.
According to NGOs, Madhya Pradesh comes second to Rajasthan as far as the marriage of minor girls is concerned. While the average age of marriage for an Indian girl is 20 years, it is 17 in Madhya Pradesh.
Child marriages usually take place in the Tawar Rajput, Lodha, Sodhiya and Dangi communities. Yadavs and Gujjars also follow the trend. NGOs say nearly 20,000 children were married off last year on this day in Madhya Pradesh alone.
The police has also been instructed to keep an eye on those who are found promoting or encouraging child marriages. Media advertisements, TV programmes and jingles on All India Radio are being used to spread the message about the right age of marriage as well as the ill-effects of child marriage.
But will this suffice?
“Addressing attitudes and customs that promote the practice is vital in changing the acceptable age for marriage. Government needs to take more stern steps or else we will have a repeat of what happens every year,” said Nirmala Buch, who heads NGO Child Rights Observatory that has been set up with the support of Unicef’s Madhya Pradesh office.
“Child marriage officers under the act of 2006 must be made active and accountable for results as expected by law,” she added.
“Child marriage is a violation of child rights, and it takes a heavy toll on the physical, intellectual and emotional aspects of the children involved,” said UNICEF’s State of World Children Report, which emphasised on expanding children’s knowledge and empowerment since educated girls are less likely to agree to marriage at a young age.
The practice of child marriage, the report says, is also an obstacle in achieving every development goal – eradicating poverty and hunger, achieving universal primary education, promoting gender equality, protecting children’s lives and improving maternal health. Madhya Pradesh is off-track on seven out of eight millennium development goals (MDGs).
“We are more concerned about child marriages because even those parents who understand its negative impact may find it hard to resist economic and societal pressures and traditions,” said Kumud Singh, the secretary of Sarokar, an NGO working to create pressure against child marriages.
Besides tradition, poverty, dowry, patriarchy, caste, social myths, poor implementation of the law and the lack of strong political will to go against “tradition or beliefs of its voting constituency” is also one of the factors responsible for the menace, NGOs point out.
The Unicef report said girls marrying before 15 years have five times more chances of dying while giving birth. The state already has a high maternal mortality rate.
Realizing that such malpractices cannot be curbed through government efforts alone and that there is a need to generate awareness in society, the state government has chalked out a plan which envisages the holding of camps and rallies to generate awareness among the people against child marriages.