Not just a storm in a teacup

Child marriage is a challenge among Assam’s tea tribe but is it missing in the current narrative around the crackdowns? Are issues around women’s employment and access to education being addressed? Azera Parveen Rahman finds out what’s brewing

Over the last week, the Assam police have arrested over 2,700 people in what the state’s chief minister, Himanta Biswa Sarma, has called a “crackdown” on child marriage cases. The state’s high teenage pregnancy rate — at 16.8 per cent — was the main reason behind this clampdown, the CM stated. Most cases registered are in Muslim-majority districts, raising a debate over the targeting of a particular community, but amid all this, there is another community that has been forgotten in the discourse — the tea tribe. Accounting for nearly 20 per cent of the state’s population, child marriage among the tea tribe is a major issue; as is teenage pregnancy.

In 2019, Dr Pallavi Sharmah of the NGO Centre for Research and Advocacy for Child Rights and Persons with Disabilities, found that 67 per cent of girls in the 15-20 age group in one of the most tea plantation-intensive districts of Assam were married. This, she said, led to sexual exploitation and teenage pregnancy. “The survey was carried out in the Udalguri district of Assam but is representative of the general condition among the tea tribe community in the state,” she said.

It is important to note that elopement among teenagers in tea estates is more common than a “social marriage” with parental approval. “Parents sometimes rush to get the girl married when she returns,” Dr Sharmah said.

According to the NFHS-5 data, between 2019 and 2021, 31.8 per cent of women in Assam in the 20-24 age group were married before the legal age of 18. During the time of the poll, more than 11% of married women in the 15–19 age group were either expecting or already moms.

The rate of child marriage is greater than the national average in certain of the state’s tea-intensive districts, including Udalguri (32%), Sivasagar (27.9.%), Jorhat (24.9%), and Dibrugarh (23%), according to Dr Madhulika Jonathan, head of UNICEF Assam’s field office.

Long-term repercussions

It is frequently emphasised by health professionals and activists working in the field that girls who marry when still in their childhood risk immediate and long-term repercussions, which is confirmed by research. They are more likely to suffer domestic abuse and less likely to complete their school. Child marriage raises the possibility of an early, unplanned pregnancy, which in turn increases the risk of complications during childbirth and maternal and infant mortality.

It is challenging to think about or handle these issues separately, though. Consequently, those who work on the issue of child rights emphasise that while it is important to uphold the law — the arrests taking place in Assam have primarily been booked under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offenses Act, 2012, and Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, 2006 — this is hardly a long-term solution. This also drew tough questions from the Gauhati high court, which granted anticipatory bail to nine people while observing that the drive had created “havoc in the private lives of people”. It said “these are not matters for custodial interrogation.” For the tea tribe group, early marriage and teen pregnancies are issues that are complicated by additional issues including illiteracy, ignorance of the detrimental effects of early motherhood on a young girl’s physical and mental health, poverty, and alcoholism, among others.

Gender disparities

According to Dr Madhulika, “Multidimensional poverty continues to be the cause and effect of child marriage.” “It turns into a cycle of deprivation that is passed down through generations and is strongly ingrained in societal standards that affect children’s safety, health, and nutritional status as well as their educational standing. Girls and women are more marginalised when gender disparities are included in the equation," she adds. In a study published in the International Journal of Research Culture Society in April 2022, Dr S C Subudhi, assistant professor at the North East Hill University, found that 39 per cent of ‘child workers’ below the age of 18 in Dibrugarh district’s tea gardens were married. The interviewer used a sample of 300 kids from 25 tea gardens.

Arfan Hussain of the NGO, Sewa, which works with the tea tribe community, said that while bigger tea companies have become more compliant with child labour laws, “children continue to be employed by the small tea growers”. “More than 50 per cent of the state’s green leaf production comes from small tea growers. In the Dibrugarh area alone, there are 30,000 tiny tea growers; in Assam, there are over two lahks. Due to their financial situation, they are continuously seeking employment for their children, adds Hussain.

When schools closed during Covid-19, he said, this issue was even worse as tea was still being made. Children started to work harder as a result. They were now vulnerable to sexual exploitation because of this. Girls between the ages of 15 and 16 who enter the workforce are also perceived as adults by their parents, making them more vulnerable to early marriage.

In Dr Subudhi’s study, families from the tea tribe similarly cited poverty as the main justification for forcing their daughters to get married young. Dr Pallavi Sharmah said that alcoholism was a significant component in the community’s poor economic and health status, which further encouraged youth to work, drop out of school, and elope — “to seek solace elsewhere.”

Over the years, awareness about the importance of education and the detrimental
effects of child marriage has risen among the tea tribe community. Dr Madhulika said that UNICEF, in association with government agencies, has been actively working in 205 tea gardens in Assam. “Through our child protection programme, we have reached over 34,000 adolescent girls and boys in the past few years,” she said. The objective of the programme is to empower adolescents to take action to protect themselves from violence, exploitation and child marriage. “Over 100 child marriages have been averted by these champions in 2022 alone,” she added. Hussain also agreed that the level of awareness among the tea tribe — whether it is on the importance of education or child marriage — has grown over the years. “However, with growing awareness, the tea industry’s crises have also grown over the years. They are dealing with problems of productivity, workforce challenges, etc., which means that the welfare of workers is not a priority,” he said.

The challenge of child marriage, therefore, requires a multi-pronged, multi-stakeholder strategy in order to deal with all the driving factors that lead to it.

(This story is supported by Work: No Child’s Business.)