By Roli Srivastava
When police knocked on the door when Muskaan, 15, was about to move to the temple in her northern Indian village, the bride was distraught.
With a healthy father and an unemployed brother, Muskaan believed that marrying the son of a remote relative would ease his family’s monetary burden and offer him a better future.
However, a report to the government in June through local activists involved on an increase in early marriages, the blockade of coronavirus in India led to the annulment of Muskaan’s marriage, while his parents were charged under the child marriage law.
“When my father arranged my marriage, I accepted,” said Muskaan, whose call he replaced to protect his identity, by phone from his village in the Jaunpur district of Uttar Pradesh. Still, he said he would have liked to go to school if possible.
“There’s no food. We live in a room. My father was worried about me and was crying,” he said. “My marriage would have solved everything. Now they say I’ll have to wait 3 years (until the legal age to marry in India).”
After the Covid-19 pandemic closed the industry and closed schools in March, activists and officials from parts of India, from Tamil Nadu state to the south to Maharashtra west of Maharashtra, saw a trend: child marriages were on the rise.
Before the epidemic, many early marriages revolved around public celebrations and massive gifts paid through the bride’s family.
However, the restrictions imposed through the closure of India mean that many unemployed and suffering families hold reasonable ceremonies and renounce bills as they seek to alleviate their economic hardship.
With school closures and discreet marriages, officials are concerned that young people, especially women, can reach, teach, and save marriages that restrict their future.
Early marriage increases the likelihood of women dropping out of school, and activists say it also increases the threat of slavery, domestic violence and sexual violence and death in childbirth.
Of the 223 million women in India who were married as girls, almost the part married before the age of 15, according to UNICEF statistics.
UNICEF 2018’s knowledge showed that around 27% of women are married by the age of 18, up from 47% in the previous decade. However, activists are concerned that progress is at risk in rural India.
Thameem Unisa, a social welfare official in Tamil Nadu, said the number of child marriages in two of the state’s districts had increased to 27 in June from five in March. His team controlled to save five0 marriages in that period, but 24 were still carried out, he added.
“It was like that 10 years ago,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
“We’ve done it and sensitized Array … the motion (for girls’ empowerment) is the other way around.”
Traffic threat
Childline, a children’s hotline funded through the federal government, said it ended 5,200 child marriages between March and May. They said it was not imaginable to compare knowledge to years gone by now.
The Indian Child Protection Commission said there was no knowledge to suggest an increase in child marriages by closure, but called on state governments to be more attentive to the threat.
The Child Marriage Prohibition Act imposes a fine of 100,000 Indian rupees ($1,535) and two years for parents who do not marry their minor children.
“Child marriage is a potential concern. We, this is what this is about,” said Priyank Kanoongo, chairman of the Committee on the Rights of the Child. “Those who are vulnerable … deserve to be mapped to link them to the government’s social coverage programs.”
The Federal Department of Women and Children responded to repeated requests for knowledge and comments.
Millions of internal migrants have lost their jobs in recent months and returned to city villages, fighting for limited paintings and suffering for their families.
Activists are concerned that this may lead some men to take credit for reasonable marriages to traffic women for sexual and work purposes.
Rolee Singh of the Dr. Shambunath Singh Research Foundation in Uttar Pradesh, who had warned police in the case of The Muskaan, said he had noticed that more families were asked to be provided in the villages, some even handing cash over to the girl’s parents.
“Conflicts in homes have increased, women are not receiving care, and schools and schools are closed,” she said. ” (Girls) do not know well and are in a position to convey the promise of marriage. We are involved in increased traffic.”
School ended
The closure of schools across India since March has only disrupted education, but also the defense of child marriage.
“Many paintings (about the marriage of children) have been about keeping schools running and keeping women in schools,” said Puja Marwaha, director of the nonprofit Child Rights and You.
She said more parents had stopped marrying their daughters on the condition that they were in school, which were a “safe space.”
The number of out-of-school women in India, aged between 11 and 14, fell to less than 5% in 2018, up from 10% a decade ago, according to a survey conducted by the NGO Pratham.
Maharashtra plans to reopen residential schools to cope with an “unexpected” increase in child marriage, an official said. The state government arrested more than a hundred such marriages between April and July, but fears that many more will not be reported.
But schooling can only go so far, according to activists who have said that pandemic-aggravated poverty can make it difficult for families to avoid marrying their daughters.
Muskaan’s father is too well.
“This town is not good … we care about your safety … we don’t have cash to feed her,” said the 65-year-old man, who has no name to protect her daughter’s identity.
Your daughter’s wedding would have been held without dowry, an uncommon opportunity for the circle of relatives to borrow to repay the groom’s parents and go into debt.
“We are among the poorest here, no one is with us,” he added. “What if I die? My daughter will stay on the road.