An increasing number of people are coming forward with complaints of child marriages in the Pune zilla parishad (ZP). While 28 cases were reported last year, this year, in seven months, as many cases have already been reported through Childline (1098). An official said this is a positive result of generating awareness.
The first step to preventing child marriage is to report it. Earlier, citizens ignored this social malaise, which is another form of encouragement. Keeping this in mind, the Pune ZP held meetings with gram panchayats of 16 identified villages to orient them for social action and guide on laws, methods of collecting social intelligence, and preventing measures like counselling.
The Pune City police, Pune rural police and Pimpri Chinchwad police also received special support for this. The plan now is to also encourage Asha and Anganwadi workers to work with various communities.
The locations of complaints were Indapur, Shirur, Lonavala, Nighoj Partner, Khed, Mulshi, Lonavala, Maval, Urli Kanchan, Manjari, Shivane, Talegaon Dabhadenagar, Talegaon-Maval, Junnar, Alandi Devachi, Supe, Purandar, Daund, Baramati, Hadapsar, and Kondhwa.
Confirming the development, an official said that child marriages in modern age could be a result of increased poverty due to the pandemic and the general insecurity over livelihood triggered by Covid. “As schools had shut down, girls could not study anymore. We are getting complaints not just from interior villages but also from the urban periphery,” the official said.
Ayush Prasad, the CEO of Pune ZP, said that necessary instructions have been given to the police to take appropriate preventive action in both child marriages and female foeticide. He said they are working closely with Pune and Pimpri Chinchwad city police in this regard. An official said that in some cases parents expressed apprehension that the temporary shutdown of schools had also made girls vulnerable to sexual harassment within large families or neighbourhoods and hence they sought to get them married.
“Many said that they did not know if they would have enough money later to perform the marriages. The worrying trend is the young age group of 13-15-yearolds being forced into marriage,” he said.
“Due to the financial crisis that many are facing today, given a choice between educating the boy or the girl in the family, there is a likelihood of many girls being forced to drop out and forced into marriage. There is a need to strengthen child protection committees and the working of child marriage prohibition officers to increase community participation,” he said.
