HYDERABAD: Educating girls at least up to the intermediate level can drastically bring down the rate of child marriages, a study conducted by Council for Social Development (CSD) in the South Indian States has revealed. According to the study, even though child marriages in Telangana have declined after the formation of the State, it is still marginally higher than the all-India figure. Districts with the most child marriages in South India are in Telangana.
The study titled ‘Statistical Bulletin on the incidence of Child Marriage in South India’ provides a comprehensive statistical picture of child marriages among women aged 20-24 years in the Southern States, by comparing two data sets of National Family and Health Survey (NFHS 4 and 5). A total of 120 districts, 31 in Telangana, 30 in Karnataka, 13 in Andhra Pradesh, 14 in Kerala and 32 in Tamil Nadu have been included in the study. It was recently released by Prof Shantha Sinha, a Raman Magsaysay awardee and anti-child labour activist.
The bulletins highlighted that around half of the women who had no education or less than 5 years of education reported being married off before the age of 18 years. However, among those with 12 or more years of education showed least incidence, including 3.3% in Kerala, 6.5% in Tamil Nadu, 9.3% in Telangana, 8.8% in Andhra Pradesh and 8.3% in Karnataka. In other words, 12 or more years of completed school education reduces the incidence of child marriage by more than 6.5 times in comparison with those who have no or less than 5 years of education, the bulletin says.
“Emphasising on the secondary education of girl children should be a priority of the government. Districts with higher incidences should be under focus to arrest the prevalence,” said Soumya Vinayan, assistant professor at CSD who co-authored the study with Mohammad Sajid, a research associate and Sujit Kumar Mishra, regional director of CSD.
Child marriages slightly higher in Telugu States
“Under NFHS-3 undivided Andhra Pradesh had registered a marginal increase in the age of marriage compared to the previous round. In 2014, Telangana was formed. Therefore, NFHS 4 (2015-16) and NFHS 5 (2019-21) provide a comparison at the time of the creation of Telangana and after respectively on the incidence of child marriages,” Soumya added.
Under NFHS-5, the incidence of women who were married off before 18 years of age in India stood at 23.3%. Among South Indian states, AP stood at 29.3% while Telangana with 23.5% had a higher incidence than the national average. Child marriages among SCs and STs in both Telangana and AP seem to be higher than in other South Indian states.
The incidence was also higher in rural Andhra Pradesh (32.9%), Telangana (27.4%) and Karnataka (24.7%) than in Tamil Nadu (15.2%) and Kerala (8.2%). District-wise data shows that there is no incidence of child marriage in the district of Pathanamthitta in Kerala whereas the highest incidence in South Indian districts was registered in Vikarabad district (39.8%) of Telangana, closely followed by Vijayapura (Bijapur) (39.2%) in Karnataka.