As someone who values children actually having good, healthy and wholesome childhood the concept of child marriage has always made me feel uncomfortable. Back when I was in school I was naive enough to believe that child marriage as a social evil was abolished because of the change in laws. But as I have grown older, I have come to realise that the laws don’t really matter because the people in India usually are not educated about them and tend to stick to old traditions, no matter how backward they might be. Take this for example, child marriages increased during the Covid lockdown. Moreover, Karnataka topped the list.
Amongst all the pandemic weddings that you might have been a part of they were also a huge amount of child marriages that were happening in India during that time. According to the National Crime Records Bureau, Karnataka had the highest amount of child marriages in 2020 with the number of marriages having doubled. Women and child development minister Halappa Achar responded to a question by Congress member K Govindaraju saying that 296 child marriages were reported in Karnataka between 2020-2021.
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The number of reported cases increased by 140. This is from the 156 cases that were recorded from 2019 to 2020 and 109 were recorded from 2018 to 2019. Hassan had the most amount of cases in the state followed by Mandya, Mysuru, and Ramanagara (31). From 2019 to2020 Hassan had 0 child marriage cases and only three from 2018 to 2019. From 2020 to 2021 Bengaluru reported 9 cases.
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Achar further said that the government has launched a campaign throughout the state to prevent child marriages. According to the Hindustan Times, Narasimha G Rao, who is a child rights activist said that the government permission at the beginning of the lockdown to do marriages within the house increased the risk of child marriage he further said that such marriages cannot be considered valid. He further said, “All of these children need to be tracked down and their experiences documented. They may also be subjected to sexual abuse and dowry harassment. Parents and children must be counselled and brought back into the fold of education.”
