Since 2020, Bengaluru has seen a growing number of child marriages, according to data from the Department of Women and Child Development.
Story so far: During the Covid-19 restrictions, marriages were smaller, with fewer participants and lesser expenditure. This encouraged parents to marry their daughters early. Since many parents had also lost their jobs, they could not pay school fees resulting in them worrying about the safety of their daughters.
- Till August of this year, 51 complaints of child marriage were received, but only 42 were stopped.
- A total of 47 marriages occurred in the city between 2020 and August 2022, and out of 279 complaints, authorities were able to stop 232 marriages.
Raising age won’t help: Although the Union Cabinet raised the legal age for women to get married from 18 to 21 and Karnataka brought in the Prohibition of Child Marriage (Karnataka Amendment) Act, 2016, changing the law is not going to help. The Young Voices National report stated that without a change in reality, amending laws will not reduce child marriages.