Teenage marriage rampant in Kerala

By Abdullah E (Khabrein.Info)

Munnar: Teenage marriage is still a big issue in Kerala. Despite being one of the more developed states in India, the state is still facing the problem of very early marriage. In many cases girls as young as fourteen are married off to grooms double their age.

The only criteria for bridegrooms in most of the cases is that the groom should be in gainful employment and what better if he is working in Gulf region.

And a number of times, the groom leaves for his job in the gulf, leaving his teenaged wife alone with her in-laws, that too becomes a very tricky issue for the young bride to tackle. It is besides the physical toll that the very early marriage takes on the bride who in otherwise case should have been playing with dolls in the company of her other friends.

The number of teenage marriage is sky rocketing around the tea plantation areas here. The trend is rampant in the Tamil dominated areas like Kantalloor Vattavada, according to local media reports.

Girls between the ages of 13-18 are frequently forced in early marriage life thanks to rampant illiteracy and lack of knowledge about the law

Being part of the trend too many knots are reported between the relatives. Most of the families have no minimum knowledge about the marriage Act or the laws related to the registration. The growing illiteracy and poverty rates remain as the key issues behind such a regressive trend.

As a custom the people in and around the plantations send their children to Tamil Nadu after the high school education. Most of them hardly pursue higher studies and being trapped to the child labor rackets. The rest who couldn’t pass out the tenth standard will remain in the plantation putting an end to the career.

Such drop outs are mostly forced to the marriage either by the family or the loved ones from the relatives. The government had set up a social mechanism to curb this trend but failed thanks to the lack of interest among the target audience.

The preprimary centers were used to develop the awareness among the teenagers under the banner of teenage clubs. But, such centers across the plantations are turned to be the workhouses of private parties.

Last week the people here had to accommodate an 11 year old pregnant girl who was dropped by her 30 years old husband. Such cases were reported from nearest areas despite the government offered preventing measures.