India, Hot Bed for Child Marriages

Bangalore: Women in Delhi are least likely to get married before reaching the age of 18 while women in Jharkhand are most likely, suggested the Registrar General of India's latest Sample Registration System (SRS) survey, reported Kounteya Sinha for TOI.

While India's Capital recorded the lowest percentage of women (0.5 percent) who got married before the age of 18 in 2010, it was followed by Haryana (0.7 percent) and Jammu & Kashmir (0.9 percent).

On the other hand Jharkhand recorded the highest percentage of women who got married before the legal age of marriage (13 percent) followed by Rajasthan (10.1 percent) and West Bengal (8.2 percent).

The report also revealed that an average woman in India in 2010 got married at 21 years of age. The percentage of women who got married before the legal age was nearly three times higher in rural India (6 percent) in comparison to urban India (2.4 percent). Surprisingly, there has been a 61 percent decline in the percentage of women getting married before 18 years of age from 2001-2010 (12.7 percent to 5 percent). In 2001, nearly eight states recorded early marriages to the tune of 10 percent and above. Comparatively in 2010, only two states recorded such high rates of under-18 marriage - Jharkhand and Rajasthan.