A Child before a Bride

A Child before a Bride: exploring the problem of dowry in India and South Asia 

The latest available national data on child marriage in India, collected in 2019–2021,  reveal substantial progress, but also expose the limits of national averages. The  proportion of women aged 20–24 who were married before eighteen fell from  approximately 53% in 1996 to 23% in 2021. Yet this reduction has been far from uniform: prevalence remains particularly high in West Bengal, at 42%; Bihar, at 41%; Tripura, at 40%; and Jharkhand, at 32%. Behind the language of improvement, nearly one in four young women nationally had entered marriage before adulthood. Progress deserves recognition, but these figures still describe childhoods cut short and futures negotiated before girls could meaningfully choose them. Understanding these inequalities requires looking beyond explanations that reduce child marriage to religious tradition. UNFPA’s analysis of Bihar, based on the National Family Health 

Survey, reveals striking differences associated with education, wealth, and residence. Child marriage affected approximately 54% of young women from the poorest households, compared with 9% from the wealthiest; prevalence was also higher in rural than urban areas. These associations do not establish a single cause, but demonstrate how profoundly unequal the circumstances surrounding marriage remain. Social traditions and economic insecurity can reinforce each other, particularly where daughters are treated as financial responsibilities whose future belongs to another household. This is where child marriage intersects with dowry: transfers of money, goods, or property from the bride’s family to the groom or his family. The UNFPA–UNICEF review, Child Marriage and Other Harmful Practices, describes how marriage payments can sustain early marriage across South Asia, including India. In some contexts, younger brides require smaller dowries, creating an incentive for families to arrange marriages earlier. The reasoning is brutally transactional: delaying a daughter’s marriage may be perceived as increasing its cost, while marrying her young promises to contain expenditure. The review also connects preferences for younger brides with expectations that they will be easier to control and less likely to challenge the marital household. Economic calculation thus becomes inseparable from the demand for female submission. However, poverty alone cannot explain the practice, which also persists among wealthier families. Gender hierarchies, social prestige, and fears concerning sexuality and family honour can sustain marriage arrangements even where financial necessity is less acute. These realities must be considered against India’s international human rights commitments. India acceded to the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1992, undertaking obligations concerning children’s protection and development. Marriage during childhood can undermine the rights to education, health, protection from violence, and participation in decisions affecting one’s life. 

India is also a party to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, although its declarations concerning community customs and marriage registration reveal tensions surrounding implementation. Its declaration on compulsory registration, for example, invoked the practical difficulties posed by the country’s size and diversity. Such positions raise a fundamental question: how can universal rights be secured when their implementation must confront practices defended through community authority? The Sustainable Development Goals provide another benchmark. Target 5.3 calls for the elimination of child, early, and forced marriage by 2030; unlike treaty obligations, this is a global political and development commitment. Achieving it requires interventions that address the conditions making early marriage appear desirable or unavoidable. Accessible secondary education, meaningful employment opportunities, social protection, and support services must accompany efforts to challenge dowry demands and restrictive gender norms. 

Programme design also matters: the UNFPA–UNICEF review documents cases in which financial incentives intended to delay marriage were absorbed into dowry or wedding expenses. Such findings expose the limits of interventions that leave underlying power relations intact. Success cannot mean merely moving a wedding beyond a girl’s eighteenth birthday. It must mean expanding her power to decide whether, when, and whom to marry. Until her future ceases to be treated as a family transaction, declining statistics will tell only part of the story.

Recognising the girl child as a subject of rights demands more than international commitments: it requires examining how India’s domestic laws have evolved, whose interests they have protected, and whether they have secured her recognition as a person before treating her as a wife.

-Valentina Savino 

• United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). (n.d.). India country profile. Child 

Marriage Data Portal. 

• United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). (2022). Child marriage in Bihar: Key 

insights from the NFHS-5 (2019–21). Analytical Paper Series #1A. 

• United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) & United Nations Children’s Fund 

(UNICEF). (2020). Child marriage and other harmful practices: A desk review of 

evidence from South Asia. UNFPA. 

• United Nations. (1979). Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of 

Discrimination against Women. United Nations Treaty Collection. 

• United Nations. Goal 5: Achieve gender equality and empower all women and 

girls.