 What is the right age for motherhood? Will increasing the age for marriage for women in India to 21 lead us to a better motherhood? In this video, we will try to debunk some facts about the correlation between age and motherhood. In his speech on the Independence Day, Prime Minister Narendra Modi stated that the committee has been set up to look into the reconsideration of the minimum age for marriage for women in India, among other things. The committee is reportedly probing the possibility of considering the increment in the marriage age for women in India from 18 to 21. Currently, the mortality rate is 122 per 100,000 childbirths, which is extremely concerning. The centre argues that increasing the marriage age for women in India to 21 will lower the mortality rate and improve the nutritional levels in women. But the experts working on women and health don't seem to be convinced with the argument. The latest family health survey which took place between 2015 to 2016 reveals that 26.8 percent of women were below the age of 18 at the time of their marriage. This as 18 is the legal age for marriage for women in India. The data also goes on to show that 20 percent of the women belonging to the poorest households married much younger in the population spectrum compared to the 20 percent of the women belonging to the wealthier households. The data clearly speaks of poverty as the defining factor when it comes to the decision about the age of marriage. To get more information on this, we spoke to Mary E. Johns who is an expert on the policy and has been writing excessively about it and she's also a part of the centre for women's development studies. Very large proportions of women in India marry before the age of 21. Let us assume that their marriage patterns are not going to change overnight because the new law has come in. If their marriage patterns do not change then the majority of women will be under this new law. They will become criminalizable without legal recourse under this new law. Just to give you some numbers, 75 percent of the poor, and they are the one who married, we know very well it's more poor women who married younger ages, 75 percent of the poorest 20 percent will now be in this situation. One third of women in Kerala, we don't associate Kerala which is a good state with good social indicators for women and good health indicators and all that, but even there the average age at marriage is 22 and one third of women married before the age of 21. So why would you want to do this? Why would the Indian state want to put so many women at risk? And the intentions are probably good intentions. That is to say higher ages at marriage are associated with better health outcomes for the mother, for the child when should she have a child. It's associated with higher levels of education and so on. So this association, this statistical association that at higher ages these are the characteristics of the women who married at higher ages. I think this has been a source of great confusion for everybody. Why is there such a strong association? Because women like ourselves, women from better backgrounds, women non-poor women mostly, women from middle-class families and so on. We all married at higher ages and we also are on the whole have access to good health care. We are not anemic and so our children are healthy. So the fact that the statistics has this positive association does not mean that a poor woman who waits for three more years now to get married will automatically be healthier, will automatically be better off, will automatically have many more opportunities that she didn't have three years earlier. For those opportunities to take place, many other things have to happen. She has to have access to schooling, she has to have access to health care. If there is no health care in her village, just waiting for three more years, give her that health care. You see, so this is the source of a lot of confusion that the statistics shows this pattern but the actual effects of mere age, if a poor woman were to simply say, okay, there's a new law, I'm going to wait for three years, very little, in my statistical analysis, the effect of the age factor is very small. The effect of her poverty, the effect of her lack of education, her anemia for instance, is much, much greater. So nothing much is going to change if we simply were to make her wait. The prohibition of the Child Marriages Act of 2006 plays an important role in governing the legal marriages in India. Under the act, a man who's above the age of 18 and is married to a minor under the age of 18 can be imprisoned for up to two years. Not just the men, the families who influence the decision of the minors can also be locked up for two years. To understand the legality of the step, we spoke to Madhu Mehra, who's a partner at a law firm. You know, 18 is the age of adulthood and after 18, girls should be ideally allowed to make their own choices. And in that sense, there should be meaningful choices and opportunities available to them. Now, what we might do is if we increase the age of marriage is to actually have greater parental control. And this is not just a theoretical concern. If you look at how the child marriage laws are used, a study that Partners for Law in Development has done from 2008 to 2017, looking at all the cases that were filed in this period, not just under child marriage, but criminal laws as well as Hibiscus corpus. What we found is the majority of cases are parents prosecuting girls for elopement, girls and their husbands. So predominantly the law is used against self-arranged marriages by girls, which the parents disapprove of. A small minority of cases involved arranged marriages, but they also don't prosecute purely on the basis that the girl is underage. Though those cases are usually cases that might be brought by parents along with the young people. Often, often men bring them to court for marriages that have broken down already for reasons of dowry, incompatibility and so on. So we find that if this is the staggering evidence available before us that parents are not being prosecuted for arranged or for forced marriage, the law is largely used against self-arranged marriages. Then clearly when you have the increase in age to 21, you will find that the quantum of cases will just increase of parents being able to control the choices of their daughters right up till the 21 years, which is very dangerous given that not only are there taboos against choosing your own partner, but we see honour crimes taking place when girls make choices outside of their community and cast. So the law will be a ready tool for being used in such cases. And there's another very critical aspect of this which we must bear in mind that when underage marriages are being prosecuted, girls, parents use provisions under poxso against the husband, which is the law on child sexual offences. And for the offence of aggravated rape, a husband can be sentenced to a minimum of 20 years imprisonment. Whereas when the law is used to prosecute a parent for arranging marriage of an underage daughter, the maximum sentence if a conviction does happen would be two years and there is no minimum. It could be a fine. So you see the law is really becoming quite draconian for those in self-arranged marriages. And therefore, there is really no reason why the law should be used to increase. Yes, create more opportunities, provide more options for girls, and you will see that they will not be, you know, they will not have the urge to marry early. It's also because of the lack of opportunities that you end up marrying early, particularly in context of poverty. In the rural households, many of the families are more likely to marry off their girls at a much younger age for their social economic reasons. This population comprises of 45% of the scheduled tribes and 25.9% of the scheduled castes. Mariam Dhavle, an activist who's been working proactively in the women's movement and also a member of the All India Democratic Women's Association, spoke to us about the political undertones of this step. The social fabric, if it has to be changed, or if women have to be benefited in some way, then there are other things that the government needs to be doing. For example, enhancing educational opportunities, trying to strengthen the health infrastructure, enabling different kinds of facilities for women to be able to get their rights and be more empowered in a way. But instead of doing all this, the government is trying to just address the issue as if raising the age of marriage will ultimately solve all the problems that are occurring. And that is not going to happen because the question of hunger is going to remain. Today we find that India has the largest number of hungry people in the world and it is spending 102 out of 117 countries in the global hunger index. Now in this pandemic, in fact, India is going to face a severe hunger pandemic. But that is not being addressed. It is hunger is related to malnutrition, is related to very bad health and is related to the very high infant mortality rates. But none of this is being addressed. So if you just raise the marriage age, it does not mean that all these other things are going to be corrected. So the government doesn't have its policies in place and it's a very, very wrong step to do because that will only criminalize something that is consensual, criminalize and put people in jail if they are married below 21 years. That is all that's going to happen. None of these other aspects are going to be addressed. The government is trying to play up the issue of minority again trying to play up the issue of the trying to protect the country and kind of thing. And that is how it is being raised by the BJP. So it is very, very clear that these government is trying to pay the minority card trying to polarize people again on this issue and not addressing rather trying to sideline the real issues because that is where they have no answer. Education opportunities and women oriented policies are the need of the hour and seriously require government's consideration. By merely serving a populist perspective by increasing the marriage age for women to 21 is barely going to cut it.