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In northern India, where one in two girls is wed before the age of 18, the rate of child marriage is dropping—and an innovative program is paying girls to stay unmarried.
By Gayle Tzemach Lemmon - December 19, 2011
In a
cement-walled room at the end of a rutted road in the rural Indian district of
Bhiwani, a teenage girl named Lado sits in a shaft of sunlight and talks
confidently about her future. “I want to be a math teacher,” says the
17-year-old, her printed green scarf falling on to her lap. “I tell my parents,
‘Do whatever you want, but educate me. Let me go to school.’”
Welcome to the front lines of the fight to stop
child marriage in a country where nearly half of all girls wed before age
18. The weapon of choice: cash.
Lado is
part of an innovative program called Apni Beti Apni Dhan, or Our Daughters, Our
Wealth. Launched in 1994 by the northern state of Haryana, the program gives poor
families 500 rupees ($11, the equivalent of less than half a week’s pay) when a
daughter is born, and also deposits money into a savings account. If the girl
turns 18 unwed, she is eligible to redeem the bond, worth 25,000 rupees
(roughly $500, or one third of an average yearly income). The earliest of the
program’s approximately 150,000 enrollees turn 18 next year, offering a
rare chance to study whether the program offers a solution other states—and
countries—can use.
Whether it can be tied directly to Apni
Beti or not, child marriage is on the decline in Haryana, which saw an 18
percent drop in the practice between 1992 and 2006. Haryana community workers
say that thus far none of the program’s beneficiaries have been married off by
their parents, who know of the program’s promised payout. The girls must sign
for the bond, but it is likely their parents will have control of it because of
social norms, and most of the girls say they want their parents to use it for
their education anyway.
The stakes are high for the development of
the booming Indian
economy, home to both enviably strong 8 percent GDP growth (in a slow year)
and the greatest proportion of the world’s child marriage cases. Young
brides become young mothers with fatal consequences: pregnancy and
childbirth complications top the causes of death among teenage girls, and
babies born to mothers younger than 18 face a 60 percent greater risk of dying
in their first year than babies born to older mothers. Girls who marry are
forced to leave school, a costly loss: World Bank data show that for each year
of secondary education, a girl’s future wages climb 10 percent to 20 percent.
The $500 payment is hardly a game-changing
sum in the rich and fertile farming state of Haryana, where per capita GDP has
tripled to $1,778, well above the national average, since 1999. But the
program’s designers say the state is sending a message about the worth of
girls, traditionally seen as burdens to be fed until they move to their
husband’s home, where in-laws benefit from their work.
“They are considered to be owned, like a
piece of property or an animal,” says Firoza Merhotra, a former Haryana
government official who served as Apni Beti’s original architect. “We thought
we should try and get women to be more valued. And this was one way.”
Merhotra notes that an updated version of
the program is open to more families and pays much more at age 18, when girls
receive 85,000 rupees, or $1,635.
For Lado, the Apni Beti money offers
leverage in her struggle for upward mobility. Her parents married off her
sister, born before the start of the program, at 15, but with the help of a
supportive brother and Apni Beti’s promised payment, Lado is now in 10th grade
at school—and she doesn’t plan to stop there.
“This program does matter to girls, because
with it, they can do better in their lives,” Lado says, holding the
brown-bordered Apni Beti enrollment certificate her mother received from the
government 17 years ago. “I am happy about the help from this project, because
I need the money to study more. This makes a difference.”
The Apni
Beti program is maturing at a time when Indian women sit center stage in their
country’s economic ascent. Women account for 15 percent of the country’s
leading CEOs, compared to 3 percent in the
“If there is balance in the society, then
there will be more security for the girl, and parents will be more comfortable
and then she will be able to go out of the house.”
In addition to encouraging families to see
their daughters as assets, not liabilities, the program aims to “correct the
demographic imbalance” and stop families from aborting or killing their female
babies after birth. Haryana has one of
While economic theory says scarcity
increases value, Haryana’s low number of girls is endangering girls—and leading
some families to seek earlier marriage for their daughters’ protection.
“Parents never feel secure; if there is
balance in the society, then there will be more security for the girl, and
parents will be more comfortable and then she will be able to go out of the
house,” says Rajwati Dangi, a Bhiwani official charged with overseeing the
program, whose office sits just above a billboard of a baby girl with the words
“Don’t Hurt Me” across the top. “This is all due to imbalance of the sex ratio.
If we disturb nature, we have to pay for it.”
Attitudes, not just savings bonds, are
critical to improving the lot of girls and, in turn, society, says Dangi, who
credits Apni Beti with helping to change mind-sets about early marriage among
some families. There is, however, a long way to go in the larger battle.
“The family gives a revered position to the
boy child; he is a special child, he is given better food, better education,
pampered a lot,” says Dheera Khandelwal, finance commissioner for Haryana’s
Department of Women and Child Development. “This is a transition phase where
ultimately the girls are suffering.”
At Apni Beti’s launch in 1994, government
officials hosted events to congratulate parents on the birth of their girls, an
occasion usually ignored or celebrated only quietly out of shame that the child
produced was not a boy. The high-profile attention showed that the government
welcomed the girls—and wanted their parents to as well. Merhotra, the program’s
original designer, says she knew that they were on to something when parents
began passing out sweets to their neighbors at the arrival of a daughter—a
treat usually reserved for sons.
Still, one program alone will not change a
long-established tradition of undervaluing girls. Local officials tell of
well-worn jokes in which a man crying “she has died” weeps not for his wife,
but for his buffalo, which is harder to replace. And billboards in the 1990s
advertised, “Pay 500 Now or Pay 5 Laks Later”—or pay for an abortion now if
you’re carrying a girl or pay the steep cost of a dowry when she marries.
Such advertisements are now outlawed by the
Indian government, which has banned sex-selective abortions and any kind of
gender selection, though rumors point to their continued popularity among
parents. Dowries also are prohibited, but that has not stopped the practice,
which undoubtedly plays a role in pushing daughters out the door: for many
rural families, a daughter’s wedding is the most expensive event of their
lives.
Programs like Apni Beti and more recent
schemes supported by governments across
Some squirm at the idea of trading a girl’s
opportunity for rupees or a goat. But those fighting child marriage, a practice
Archbishop Desmond Tutu has likened to slavery, say dialogue and education
alone aren’t enough. “You can’t put a price on a human being, but economics are
one of the major drivers of the tradition in the first place,” says Malhotra.
“Economics are fundamental to changing the culture.”
In essence, say child marriage experts, you
must fight fire with fire. “You have to reprice girls; you have to give them a
shadow value,” says Dr. Judith Bruce of the Population Council, a New
York-based nonprofit focused on reproductive health. “Until you analyze the
social contract and change the cost variables, you will not get change.”
Girls like Lado and her fellow Apni Beti
participants are leading that change.
“Educated people are respected in society,”
says 17-year-old Bimla, who is now in the 11th grade and says she wants to
study accounting and work in a bank. “It is good to go outside the home and
earn something.”
Bimla’s mother is one of many women
interviewed who never had the chance to study because their families made them
wives when they were only girls—an injustice they vow to fight. “I will use the
money for her education,” says Bimla’s mother, Baby, whose parents arranged her
engagement before she had turned 14. “I fought with my parents to stay in
school. I don’t want her to have to do the same thing; I want her to have a
better life.”