Conditional Cash Transfer Schemes and Child Marriages

International Journal of Law, Policy and the Family, 2011

There is a silent complicity in child marriage in India and many rural and backward communities treat it as normal. The Government has recently amended the law to prohibit such marriage. Even though the legal framework is not bereft of problems, field data do not suggest any reduction in the incidence of child marriage. For socioeconomic reasons, the practice continues unabated. This article, based on field experiences in the Malda district of West Bengal, tries to analyse the factors leading to the continuation of the practice in order to explore social policy to prevent this social evil. Child marriage is one of the most prevalent forms of sexual abuse and exploitation especially of girls. Owing to the gendered nature of early marriage, a significant number of girls are married before reaching adulthood. As marriage achieves social status and remaining unmarried is considered an oddity, rural parents prefer to marry their daughters early to avoid the complications of marriage later. Child marriage serves as a means to perpetuate power imbalances between men and women, both in the home and outside. The practice is widespread in India as also in many other parts of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Protecting the girl child is today an issue of major concern for developing countries. It is, therefore, crucial to develop an appropriate social policy and identify agents of change to tackle child marriage more effectively. Child marriage is objectionable for several reasons. The practice condemns children to an existence devoid of education, health, safety, and freedom of choice. Early marriage not only ensures that girls accept their domestic and conjugal roles during childhood, it also puts them in a position where they are unable to exercise a choice at OUP site access on July 20, 2011

Proceedings of the 4th International Symposium on Health Research (ISHR 2019), 2020

The Government has formulated a series of policies to reduce child marriage as an effort to promote adolescent (sexual and) reproductive health. One of them is the Child Protection Act No: 35, 2014. The high prevalence of child marriage demonstrates that the system did not work as expected. One of the suspected issues is the political obstruction that causes problematic financing systems in child marriage prevention. This qualitative study was aimed at identifying the political constraint in financing child marriage prevention Mesuji. This study found informal political challenges in financing Child Marriage Prevention. The child marriage policy packaged in conjunction with financial support, disclose not gratified results in Wiralaga experiences. Slight female participation was driven by patriarchy consuetude. These challenges made the need for a policy scheme is not only done in a formal by affirmative policy but also the informal approach. For gender mainstreaming, issues on village budgetary policy, especially early marriage, should be enacted for conducting the informal strategy. Encouraging the existing women entity, such as Ibu-ibu pengajian (women religious group), Pemberdayaan Kesejahteraan Keluarga (PKK -Family Welfare Empowerment) to take a role in village political budgeting process.

Marriage of girls less than 18 years is a fundamental violation of their human rights including their sexual and study it was found that poverty is one of the major factors underpinning child marriage. 50% of the respondents belong to economic poor communities, 60% are illiterates and 25% have studied below 8 labour and farmer. them are getting less conditions of the married girls. decision making process of their family affairs. It observed that these married problems with regards to domestic violence, maternal mortality, child mortality, physical and sexual abuses in the study areas of Warangal district.

isara solutions, 2019

Child marriages were common throughout the history of world. Today, child marriage is still fairly widespread, particularly in developing countries. ‘Child Marriage is violation of girls’ human rights and undermines development efforts worldwide’ as per the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) report. Child marriage refers to any formal marriage or informal union below the age of 18 years of a girl child and 21 years of a male child. Many social, economic and religious factors play for child marriages. Approximately 12 million girls are married in each year before they reach the age of 18 years. In India, child marriage is illegal, but still occurs and has declined moderately for the last 15 years. 25 million child marriages prevented in last decade in India due to accelerated progress, according to new UNICEF estimates. Child marriage threatens the health, childhood and their lives of girl children. Girls those who are going to marry before 18 years, they are going to have low birth-weight babies, both triggering maternal and infant mortality rate and also face domestic violence. The government of India passed ‘The Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, 2006’ to prevent the child marriages in India. Still we should to examine the infrastructure, incentives, government schemes and creation of awareness in a long perspective way to prevent the child marriage as “Our Daughter is Our Wealth”.

Journal of Global Health Reports, 2021

Background This paper estimates the costs and benefits of investing in education interventions and specific child marriage programs to reduce child marriage in India. Child marriage in India remains highly prevalent despite considerable progress in the last decade or more, associated, in particular, with a decline in poverty. The economic consequences of the COVID 19 pandemic are likely to reverse these gains, meaning that the interventions to reduce child marriage evaluated in this paper assume even greater importance. Methods A literature search to identify interventions with costs and estimates of impact on reduction in child marriage for India, and other low and middle income countries was conducted. The costs and effectiveness of the interventions were modelled for India, and economic benefits of reducing school dropout rates and increasing secondary school completions were estimated. The ratio of the economic benefits to the intervention costs estimated gave the benefit-cost r...

2016

Conditional cash transfers are increasingly being used by policymakers as a strategy to postpone the marriage of adolescent girls in developing countries. While this approach has met with success in the case of education and health programmes, it is unlikely, on its own, to address deeper issues related to child marriage, such as the agency of adolescent girls in their marriage decisions, sexual rights within marriage, and social norms within their own communities. We argue for a multi‐dimensional, longer‐term and holistic view of impact, that takes into account dimensions such as realized rights, health and access to education rather than cost‐benefit based approaches that rely on single‐focus indicators.

Ochsner Journal

Background: Child marriage represents a grave violence against children and deprives them of their rights to health, education, and a livelihood. Because child marriage should be recognized as a social and medical emergency, the social determinants of child marriage in India need to be mapped. The aim of this qualitative case study was to document social determinants of child marriage identified by the authors while providing community mobile health services in rural Mewat District, India. Case Report: We present qualitative participatory medical histories and assessments of two clinical cases: an adolescent who is waiting to get married and a young woman who was married as an adolescent but developed multiple health complications after her husband abandoned her. Conclusion: Patriarchy, coercion, social customs, and norms were identified as major social determinants. The two cases demonstrate that social norms influence intergenerational norms and lead to uninformed decision-making and child marriage. In low-and middle-income countries, medical professionals should urgently address child marriage as a major public health problem. Primary care physicians and medical professionals should implement preventive measures and provide anticipatory guidance to prevent child marriage.

Jagvir Singh Maan, Associate Professor

In civilized society, child marriage has been accepted as a negative indicator and a big challenge for human development. Due to this, children are deprived of getting full education. They do not get opportunities for skill development. The responsibilities arising out of marriage deprive them of the right to flourish and dream about their lives. The same survey shows that 31 percent of women face emotional, physical and sexual violence. The society which argues that marriage at a young age strengthens the moral standards of society is well aware that in some contexts, marriage also gives men the social right to commit violence against women. According to 2016 data, 29 out of 100 women are victims of physical or sexual violence by their husbands. It is a matter of genuine concern that a large number of child marriages still take place in India. A recent report has revealed that in several states of North India, one crore men and three and a half crore women still suffer from child marriages. While every third person of Rajasthan is a victim of child marriage, Uttar Pradesh, the state with the largest population of the country, is the top in child marriage. 13.5 lakhs in Uttar Pradesh, 7.5 lakhs in Rajasthan, five lakh people have been married in Madhya Pradesh. The rate of child marriage is relatively high in Uttar Pradesh's leading districts Ghaziabad, Allahabad, Agra, Jaipur in Rajasthan, Bhopal in Madhya Pradesh and Indore, Faridabad in Haryana. Recently, the Central Government has also admitted in an affidavit filed in the Delhi High Court that the practice of child marriage is going on in many parts of the country. A major loss from child marriage is falling on their education. The children or girls whose child is married, if they are going to school also, their studies are first abandoned. This paper will attempt to discuss different aspects of child marriage in India.

SOUTH INDIAN JOURNAL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES, 2023

The development process of every human society depends on the education of an individual moreover with gender sensitization. The United Nations Conventions on Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) No. 3, 4, and 5 spell out Health and Wellbeing, Quality Education and Gender Equality. The child marriage cripples the above three goal of SDGs, thus leads to economic decline at national level. In India this issue was addressed during the British period and enacted a legislation on "Child Marriage Restrain Act" 1929. Further the post independent period took initiation on increase of martial age of the female partner in the consecutive years 1949, and 1978, from age 15 to 18 and still further enforcement of stringent measures on "Child Marriage Prevention Act" 2006. After the initial enactment of the legal measurers it's nearly 100yrs., the country march to reach, but still couldn't eradicate the evil of child marriage from the society. The research undertaken in Theni District, Tamil Nadu on the assessment on Child Marriage prevalence and its impact on young women. The purposive sampling method was adopted to select 155 married women between the age group of 20-40 with inclusive criteria, from the universe. The descriptive research design assumed to analyse the socioeconomic scenario, causes and consequences and awareness on child prevention programmes introduced by the Govt. of India. The data was collected by using structured interview. The data was analysed through SPSS 23 statistical software to cull out the findings. The study foresee the implementation of mass sensitization to general public on legal measures, empower adolescents as agents of change, educational incentives and skills development schemes with financial support system The present entrepreneur opportunity need to be four time accelerated with lot of innovations to end child marriage from the society.

The pernicious practice of child marriage is predominantly pervasive in India, despite valiant efforts by stakeholders of the criminal justice system to intercept it. Though India has ratified extensive international legislation and enacted its own to curtail this practice, the country's pluralist nature is a barrier to the enforcement of such legislation. In India, social and cultural values hold their own in the community as against state-enacted laws, resulting in weak enforcement of legislation banning child marriage. The ground reality is that the official statistics at hand on child marriage reveal only the tip of the iceberg, primarily because a significant number of child marriage cases go unreported. In line with this, the present paper provides an overview of the problem of child marriage with inferences drawn from the statistics presented, and suggests measures to impede the practice of child marriage.