Legal Age of Marriage for women- Detailed Analysis of PCMA (Amendment) Bill, 2021
Introduction
The Narendra Modi government on December 16, raised the legal age of marriage for women from 18 to 21 years old. The proposal was approved by the Union Cabinet, and a bill amending the 2006 Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, PCMA (Amendment) Bill, 2021 was filed in Parliament.
The proposed legislation equalizes the legal age of marriage for men and women by raising the age of marriage for women to 21 years. It incorporates modifications to several communities’ personal laws relating to marriage age in order to ensure uniformity in this area.
Background
In June 2020, the panel was formed. Its goals included looking into the relationship between age of marriage and motherhood and maternal and infant health, as well as key health and population indicators like the Infant Mortality Rate (IMR), Maternal Mortality Rate (MMR), Total Fertility Rate (TFR), Sex Ratio at Birth (SRB), Child Sex Ratio (CSR), and others. It was also given the duty of suggesting ways to encourage women to pursue higher education. According to the National Family Health Survey-5, 23.3 percent of women aged 20 to 24 married before the age of 18 in 2019-2021, a decrease from 26.8 percent in 2015-2016.
Experts claim that even at the existing age of marriage for women and men, enforcing the child marriage law is difficult, therefore raising the age of marriage for women to 21 is unnecessary. Evidence reveals that the law is largely utilized to punish young adults who enter into self-arranged marriages. Activists argue that since child marriage is a social and economic issue, the solution is to ensure that children have access to education.
Criticism
Opponents of the proposal, on the other hand, note that child weddings are common in India today, despite the fact that they are illegal. According to the National Family Health Survey (2019-2021), one-fourth of women aged 20-24 were married before they turned 18. The number of child marriages has increased worldwide after the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, the issue is with the application of current legislation.
Instead of legislating a higher minimum marital age, it is stated that the core cause of child marriage should be addressed in order to effect a social value shift.
Another argument against the plan is that some girls from particularly traditional, regressive, and patriarchal homes are able to escape their families’ grasp by marrying a person of their choice once they turn 18. Such girls would have to wait three extra years as a result of the proposed law amendment; this time could be utilized by families and the wider community to frighten and control such females.
As a result, improving education for girls, conducting awareness programmes on the importance of education among communities with low female education rates, and sensitizing young students of both gender about the importance of individual financial stability and the dangers of teenage pregnancies may be the solution to the problems that the proposed amendment seeks to address.
Conclusion
In an attempt to bring parity amongst the legal age for marriage, Modi government nodded to the PCMA (Amendment) Bill, 2021 intending to do the wonders by further extending the age but the amendment faced the criticism as the parliamentary panel assigned to examine the aforementioned landmark bill had only one woman MP out of 31 members. Also, the opponents claimed that the increase in age does not rules out the evil of child marriage completely and would pose a problem from the girls trying hard to escape the clutches of conservative family as soon as they turn 18. Hence, the amendment need to be thought thoroughly.