Context: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 16th October assured the girls of the country that the government will decide the right age for marriage as soon as a concerned committee gives its report. In June this year, the Centre had formed a 10-member task force under Jaya Jaitley, to recommend whether the legal age of marriage for women could be changed from 18 years. The proposal to raise the legal age for marriage of women carries “enormous" economic and social gains for India, according to a State Bank of India report. The report titled, "Increasing the legal age of women’s marriage: A dominant strategy for societal good, financially empowering women," counts benefits such as lowering maternal deaths and improving nutrition levels in the near term to putting more girls in college and enabling women to achieve greater financial independence in the long-term. 

About Jaya Jaitely Task Force

• On June 2, the Union Ministry for Women and Child Development set up a task force headed Jaya Jaitely.
• It will examine matters pertaining to age of motherhood, imperatives of lowering Maternal Mortality Ratio and improvement of nutritional levels among women.
• The task force will examine the correlation of age of marriage and motherhood with health, medical well-being, and nutritional status of the mother and neonate, infant or child, during pregnancy, birth and thereafter.
• It will look at key parameters like Infant Mortality Rate (IMR), Maternal Mortality Rate (MMR), Total Fertility Rate (TFR), Sex Ratio at Birth (SRB) and Child Sex Ratio (CSR).
• It will examine possibility of increasing age of marriage for women from present 18 years to 21 years.

Need for minimum age for marriage:

• The law prescribes a minimum age of marriage to essentially outlaw child marriages and prevent the abuse of minors.
• Personal laws of various religions that deal with marriage have their own standards, often reflecting custom.
• For Hindus: Section 5(iii) of The Hindu Marriage Act, 1955, sets 18 years as minimum age for the bride and 21 years as the minimum age for the groom.
• However, child marriages are not illegal — even though they can be declared void at the request of the minor in the marriage.
• In Islam: Marriage of a minor who has attained puberty is considered valid.
• Sexual intercourse with a minor is rape and the consent of a minor is regarded as invalid.

How did the law evolve?

• 1860: Indian Penal Code was enacted which criminalised sexual intercourse with a girl below the age of 10.
• 1927: The provision of rape was amended in 1927 through The Age of Consent Bill, 1927, which declared that marriage with a girl under 12 would be invalid.
• The law faced opposition from conservative leaders of the Indian National Movement, who saw the British intervention as an attack on Hindu customs.
• Sarda Act 1929: The Child Marriage Restraint Act set 16 and 18 years as minimum age of marriage for girls and boys respectively.
• The law is known as the Sarda Act after its sponsor Harbilas Sarda, a judge and a member of Arya Samaj.
• It was eventually amended in 1978 to prescribe 18 and 21 years as the age of marriage for a woman and a man respectively.

Child marriages in India  

• A report published by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) in the year 2020 said that while child marriages were almost universally banned, “yet they happen 33,000 times a day, every day, all around the world”. 
• An estimated 650 million girls and women alive today were married as children, and by 2030, another 150 million girls under the age of 18 will be married. Although advances in India have contributed to a 50 per cent decline in child marriage in South Asia—to 30 per cent in 2018, the region still accounts for the largest number of child marriages each year, estimated at 4.1 million in 2017, the report said. 
• In India, an analysis of child marriage data show that among girls married by age 18, 46 per cent were also in the lowest income bracket. 
• UNICEF estimates suggest that each year, at least 1.5 million girls under the age of 18 are married in India, which makes the country home to the largest number of child brides in the world — accounting for a third of the global total. Nearly 16 per cent adolescent girls aged 15-19 are currently married. 

Rationale of revision of age
1. Reduce early pregnancy:

• To reduce the risks of early pregnancy among women.
• Early pregnancy is associated with increased child mortality rates and affects the health of the mother.
• Despite laws mandating minimum age and criminalising sexual intercourse with a minor, child marriages are very prevalent in the country.

2. To bring Gender neutrality:

• As per a petition, different legal ages for men and women to marry violate Articles 14 (right to equality)and 21 (Right to live with dignity) of the Constitution.

Minimum age of Marriage in India

• The Special Marriage Act, 1954 and the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, 2006 prescribe that the minimum age of marriage is 21 years for men and 18 years for women.
• The minimum age of marriage is distinct from the age of majority which is gender-neutral.
• An individual attains the age of majority at 18 as per the Indian Majority Act, 1875.

Prevalence of underage marriage

• Majority of women in India marry after the age of 21.
• The mean age of women at marriage is 22.1 years, and more than 21 in all states.
• As per the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-4) about 26.8% of women aged 20-24 were married before adulthood (age 18).

Age of marriage and health

• Preventing early marriage can reduce the maternal mortality ratio and infant mortality ratio.
• The maternal mortality ratio (number of maternal deaths for every 100,000 children born) is 145 at present.
• India’s infant mortality ratio shows that 30 of every 1,000 children born in a year die before the age of one.
• Both these indicators in India are the highest among the BRICS economies.
• Young mothers are more susceptible to anaemia and more than half the women of reproductive age (15-49 years) in India are anaemic.

Data

• Women in the poorest 20% of the population married much younger than their peers from the wealthiest 20%.
• The average age at marriage of women with no schooling was 17.6, considerably lower than that for women educated beyond class 12.
• As per a report of the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights, almost 40% of girls aged 15-18 do not attend school.
• Nearly 65% of these girls are engaged in non-remunerative work.

Concerns

• The known reasons for early marriage are poverty, limited access to education and economic prospects, and security concerns.

If the main causes of early marriage are not addressed, a law will not be enough to delay marriage among girls.

Benefits of Raising marriage Age

• Increasing the legal age for the marriage of women has enormous benefits on social and economic fronts including lowering Maternal Mortality Ratio (MMR), improvement of nutrition levels and more opportunities for women to pursue higher education and careers.
• Increasing the marriage age will push the mean marriage age higher and will lead to more females doing graduation and hence improving the female labour force participation ratio. As per its estimations, the percentage of females doing graduation will increase by at least 5-7 percentage points from the current level of 9.8 per cent.
• "On social front, this will lead to social benefits like lowering Maternal Mortality Ratio (MMR) as well as improvement of nutrition levels while on financial front opportunities will be opened up for women to pursue higher education and careers and become financially empowered, thus resulting in a more egalitarian society in thinking,".
• Both men and women will gain economically and socially by marrying when they are more than the legal age, but added that the urge of the women is much higher as they always get a higher payoff by becoming financially empowered to take decisions.

Road Ahead

• While legal enactment to prevent child marriages is necessary, there is also the need to simultaneously work towards empowering the girls by ensuring education, ensuring economic and social empowerment of women and girls.
• There is the need for well resourced initiatives aimed at increasing girls’ access to education and health, create enabling opportunities for economic independence of the girls, which will result in empowerment of the girls. This will not just delay marriage but lead to a long term, positive health and education outcomes.

• Women are an important part of the workforce, getting them married early stops many of them from entering the labour force and being financially independent. Just raising the age of marriage is not enough we have ensure that women are given right kind of opportunities, skill set and th eright kind of education as well. Gender balance and parity is what we required. When a women is educated and financially independent then an entire family and ecosystem benefits. And also lets not forget that we need to increase the age of marriage of girls there is no doubt about that but we also have to ensure that we look up this issue holistically and ensure that the existing laws are well implemented. Girls and Women are treated on par with boys and men. The entire society needs to change- the ecosystem need to change and we too need to play a big role and big part if we need to see gender parity and gender balance in the times to come.