Rise in child marriages in West Bengal

Context: A recent study on child marriage in India published in the Lancet noted the overall decrease in child marriage across the country but pointed out that four States, mainly Bihar (16.7%), West Bengal (15.2%), Uttar Pradesh (12.5%), and Maharashtra (8.2%) accounted for more than half of the total headcount burden of child marriages in girls.

Key findings:

• The paper titled 'Prevalence of girl and boy child marriage across States and Union Territories in India, 1993–2021: a repeated cross-sectional study' reveals that approximately one in five girls in India is still married below the legal age.
• Notably, the state of West Bengal has experienced the largest absolute increase in the headcount, with a notable rise of 32.3%.
• Girl child marriage has been a persistent challenge for policymakers in West Bengal, as highlighted by the National Family Health Survey-5 conducted in 2019–20, indicating that 41.6% of women aged 20–24 were married before the age of 18, a figure consistent with the earlier National Family Health Survey-4.
• In comparison, the national average for women in this age group getting married before 18 stands at 23.3%.

Key interventions:

• Various policy interventions have been implemented by the West Bengal government to address the issue of child marriage. One prominent initiative is the Kanyashree Prakalpa, initiated in October 2013.
• This conditional cash transfer scheme aims to incentivize the education of teenage girls between 13 and 18 years old while concurrently discouraging child marriage.
• The scheme, which has received international recognition with a United Nations Public Service Award in 2017, has been in operation for nearly a decade and, as stated in the West Bengal Budget for 2023–24, has covered almost 81 lakh girls.
• In addition to Kanyashree, the state government has introduced cash incentive schemes for girls' marriages under the 'Rupashree Prakalpa' program.