HYDERABAD: Telangana state stood third in the country for women preferring consanguineous marriages, while Tamil Nadu and Lakshadweep stood in first place in the country with 33 per cent consanguineous marriages, followed by Andhra Pradesh with 32 per cent. The consanguineous marriage per cent in Telangana is 30 per cent.
Women who report that their husband was related to them by blood before their marriage was high among South Indian states, according to National Family Health Survey (NFHS-4) prepared by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.
The NFHS-4 was prepared in 2015-16. As many as 2,596 households in urban areas, 5,346 households in rural areas and 572 households in slums were selected in Telangana for the survey.
According to the survey report, young women are much more likely than older women to be related to their husbands, prior to their marriage. Consanguineous marriages are more prevalent among women in urban areas than women in rural areas. Likewise, these type of marriages are common in Muslim and Buddhists/Neo-Buddhists.
The survey was carried out among women aged between 15 to 49 years. Around 30 per cent of women aged between 18 and 29 years are marrying before reaching the legal minimum age of 18 at marriage in the State.
However, TS is better than AP which has 36 per cent marriages before the legal minimum age of women. Officials said after the introduction of the Kalyana Lakshmi and Shaadi Mubarak schemes, the early marriages might have come down in the state. The survey was taken up in 2015.
Violence by wives
The survey has an interesting feature, wives beating their husbands. Women who have ever hit, slapped, kicked, or done anything else to physically hurt their current or most recent husband was reported in the country. However, for this State-wise figures are not available.
Women who have experienced spousal violence are much more likely than women who have not experienced spousal violence to have ever initiated violence against their husbands. Nine per cent of women who have ever experienced spousal violence perpetrated such violence, compared with 1 per cent who have never experienced spousal violence in the previous survey.