poornima lagadapati
Active member
India is all set to revise the legal age for marriage for women with the government forming a high-level committee on Saturday to go into the matter and submit recommendations by July 31.
The taskforce will be headed by former Samata Party President Jaya Jaitly and will have among members VK Paul, Member, Health, NITI Ayog.The governmentnt has notified the taskforce which will examine the correlation of age of marriage and motherhood with implications on the health of mothers and infants, impact of the age of marriage on infant mortality rate, maternal mortality rate, total fertility rate, sex ratio at birth and child sex ratio.
The very first term of reference of the taskforce relates to revisiting the legal age of marriage for Indian women, with sources saying a debate is under way for parity between legal marriageable ages for men and women in India. While the legal age of marriage for women is 18 years, for men it is 21 years.
The health argument behind raising the age of marriage among women is that child bearing at lower ages leads to complications thereby increasing infant and maternal mortality.
The fertility argument behind the move is—higher age of marriage means lesser number of reproductive years for women.
The taskforce will be headed by former Samata Party President Jaya Jaitly and will have among members VK Paul, Member, Health, NITI Ayog.The governmentnt has notified the taskforce which will examine the correlation of age of marriage and motherhood with implications on the health of mothers and infants, impact of the age of marriage on infant mortality rate, maternal mortality rate, total fertility rate, sex ratio at birth and child sex ratio.
The very first term of reference of the taskforce relates to revisiting the legal age of marriage for Indian women, with sources saying a debate is under way for parity between legal marriageable ages for men and women in India. While the legal age of marriage for women is 18 years, for men it is 21 years.
The health argument behind raising the age of marriage among women is that child bearing at lower ages leads to complications thereby increasing infant and maternal mortality.
The fertility argument behind the move is—higher age of marriage means lesser number of reproductive years for women.