Child marriage is a barrier to girls’ education

To this day, not a single person from Srirangapur and Yerrapenta villages in Nagarkurnool has completed graduation
A pregnant 20-year-old Maheshwari who got married 13 months ago.
A pregnant 20-year-old Maheshwari who got married 13 months ago.

NAGARKURNOOL: Srirangapur village in Nagarkurnool district is a curious place. Ask any young married woman in this village about 170 km from Hyderabad how old she is and the answer is the same: 20. When did they get married? A year ago.

Question their husbands or relatives to verify and the answer will be the same. The situation is the same in Yerrapenta -- a tribal hamlet that borders the Nallamalla Forest. Turns out this is an acquired habit. Nagarkurnool, part of the the erstwhile undivided Mahbubnagar, is notorious for its high numbers of child marriage and the canned responses are a way to deflect interest of outsiders.

 Chenamma (with her back against the camera) talks about how her nine-year-old son discontinued education four times| Sayantan Ghosh
 Chenamma (with her back against the camera) talks about how her nine-year-old son discontinued education four times| Sayantan Ghosh

Village heads and elders here say there is a strong belief that a girl should be married off as soon as she hits puberty. Some of the young girls at Srirangapur and Yerrapenta that Express spoke to said they discontinued education after their parents died and marriage was the only route to security. However, parents complained that their children did not heed their advice to pursue an education and instead chose to marry or live-in at a young age. All the girls discontinue their studies once they get married.

Maheshwari (name changed) is one such girl in Srirangapur. The village is near the Nalamalla Forest and a bus reaches only three times a day. A few months pregnant now, Maheshwari discontinued her education after completing Class 7 and got married in 2010. She, like others, said she was 20 years old.
“I could have studied further if there was someone to support me. I discontinued studies to take care of my mother until she died. I got married after her death,” she said. At least three other married youngsters said their parents had died early.

“My parents died and I am the eldest of three children. As per elders proposal, I got married,” said Uma (name changed), who pegged her age to be between 20 to 22 years. She got married to her aunt’s son. Her first child died soon after being born and she now is pregnant again.
Young boys, who are married, try to hide that they entered into wedlock with girls below the age of 18. Eeshwar (name changed) said he was 20-years-old. He is a labourer and works in a field. Eeshwar has a child who is little over a year old. He hesitated to explain why he married early but his relatives claim that the couple fell in love

Migration responsible for school dropouts

All residents of the village and hamlet did not give their year of marriage and said they do not know their exact age.

Chenamma at Yerrapenta village said she did not know the exact age of her daughter. She guesses she must be around 10 years of age. The daughter got married after falling in love but Chenamma does not know how old her son-in-law is. When asked if she had wanted her daughter to get married early, Chenamma said, “Why would I ask her to get married early? I wanted her to study”. Her son, who is nine years old, too dropped out of school. “My son ran away from the school hostel three to four times. He did not mend his ways after changing the school. Now he works as labourer,” Chenamma said.

The heads of Yerrapenta village Katraju Niranjan and Katraju Govind said that government officials had cautioned them that cases could be booked if child marriages were performed and so the incidence of child marriages had come down now. The curious phenomena of few of these villagers knowing their own age could perhaps stem from the fact that literacy is low. According to Census 2011, average literacy rate in Mahbubnagar is 55.04 per-cent.

To this day, not a single person from Srirangapur and Yerrapenta has completed their graduation. Only three people from the both villages have made it to college and are now in their second year of an undergraduate course Lingala village, which is around 20-kilometers from the village. Migration for work, ‘disinterest’, are some of the reasons given for the high drop-out rate here.

The undivided district of Mahbubnagar is famous for its migrating residents. People from the region have long migrated to other states for work. The term they use to describe this migration is ‘valasa’ and it mainly takes place to clear debts, to crawl out of poverty, or earn some money. Detailing out how migration affects education, nutrition of children and leads to child marriage, Niranjan and Govind, heads of Yerrapenta hamlet , said that when parents go to other states in search of work, either they leave children with relatives back home or take them along.

“When parents migrate with children, the children have to drop out of school. If they chose to leave the children behind, their relatives might consider them a burden. In any case, girls are married after they hit puberty. Our people suffer from this mentality which needs to change,” said Katuraju Govind. While girls drop out because of marriage, boys seem to stop going to school as they do not enjoy the experience or were punished.

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