Child marriage remains a persistent challenge despite legal prohibition. Analyse the socio-legal factors responsible and suggest measures for effective enforcement of the PCMA, 2006.

NFHS-5 (2019-21) records that 23.3% of women aged 20-24 were married before 18 [1], though the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, 2006 fixes 18 years for females and 21 for males [2]. The persistence reflects a gap between statutory command and social practice, compounded by enforcement design flaws.

Social factors

• Poverty and dowry economics: younger brides attract lower dowry; daughters are treated as an economic burden — prevalence is concentrated in the poorest, rural, least-educated households [1].
• Patriarchal control of sexuality: early marriage is used to secure "honour" and pre-empt adolescent choice.
• Educational discontinuity: dropout at the secondary stage removes the strongest protective factor against early marriage [1].
• Custom and collective solemnisation: mass-marriage occasions normalise the practice and diffuse individual accountability.

Legal and institutional factors

• Voidable, not void: a child marriage stands unless annulled within two years of attaining majority [2] — a window rarely used by a dependent bride.
• Personal-law conflict: the claim that puberty confers marriageable capacity produced divergent High Court views; the Allahabad High Court (2026) held PCMA and POCSO apply to every citizen irrespective of religion [5].
• Weak machinery: the Act creates Child Marriage Prohibition Officers [2], but the post is typically an added charge on district officials, diluting focus; absent universal marriage registration, cases surface only after solemnisation.
• Pending reform: the Prohibition of Child Marriage (Amendment) Bill, 2021 — raising the female age to 21 and the annulment window to five years — awaits Parliamentary Standing Committee closure [3].

Way forward

• Declare such marriages void ab initio and enact the pending Bill's extended annulment period [3].
• Make marriage registration compulsory with age verification, and appoint full-time, funded CMPOs.
• Scale the Bal Vivah Mukt Bharat portal for citizen reporting and converge it with school-retention and cash-transfer schemes [4].
• Engage panchayats, qazis and priests to refuse solemnisation.

Child marriage is finally a development problem wearing a legal mask. Coupling stricter enforcement with girls' education and income security — the approach behind India's 2030 child-marriage-free goal [4] — best advances Article 21 and SDG 5.3.