MUMBAI: Monika Mehtu’s petite frame gives away little about the feisty 13-year-old hiding inside. Earlier this year, the teenager from the Bhula village of east Singhbhum district in Jharkhand, and six of her friends, prevented the marriage of a classmate by intervening with the girl’s family and even threatening of police action when nothing seemed to work.
“At 13, a girl’s body is not ready to bear a child or take the responsibility of a household,” Mehtu, a seventh standard student, says with confidence. She recalled the day her classmate Sarita confided in her with tears that her schooling days were numbered. It was unacceptable to Mehtu.
An active member of the UNICEF’s ‘bal patrakar’ initiative in 60 blocks of east Singhbhum, Mehtu was well-aware now that child marriage was a crime that could attract the facilitators a punishment of two years. “I gathered my friends and directly marched into her house. We began with explaining the mother how early pregnancy could be potentially fatal to a young girl. Our final weapon was to tell them that we won’t hesitate to call the police,” she said. After three visits, she roped in her teacher Jagdish Prasad Mandal. Sarita’s parents finally gave in.
Damodarpur, a medium size village located in Boram district of east Singhbhum, with a total of 213 families, has not seen a single child marriage in the recent times. Mandal declares with pride, “More than 60% of my students at the Damodarpur Upgraded Middle School are girls and the drop-out rate is close to nil.” Village Pradhan Ashwini Singh said the credit for preventing early marriages and helping girls finish school goes to programmes such as bal patrakar that has been running hand-in-hand with the state’s broader initiative called ‘bal sansad’ or children’s parliament.
Pioneered in Jharkhand schools around 2012, the unique way to teach children about the democratic processes, has now been adopted across the country. The team of bal sansads is led by a ‘prime minister’, who heads the cabinet ministers, all elected by students. The programme, Mandal says, has groomed children to become expressive. “It has brought about leadership, communication skills and the sense to differentiate between right and wrong,” the teacher said. A key task of the sansads is to prevent drop-outs, high among adivasis and Dalits, and bring children back to classrooms by directly engaging with families. Jharkhand that has the third highest rate of child marriage in India, after Rajasthan and Bihar, is waging a complex social battle with children now at its forefront.
Less than 30 kilometres from Damodarpur and 12kms from Jamshedpur is a village called Punsa, where the students with the help of their teachers, prevented two child marriages in February this year. In the midst of writing her exam, Mali Singh (13), was summoned home by her mother. The 7th standard student, dashed from school only to find that the emergency was to serve tea to a group of visitors. Next, she was being paraded in front of potential suitors. One of the bal patrakars of Upgraded Middle School at Kolabani, Mali immediately brought it to the notice of her teacher Pradip Kumar, whose intervention halted things. He said, “The children have become our eyes and ears. They don’t hesitate to bring information about any child marriage being planned in their vicinity, or to confront families”.

Source:  The Times of India

Married girls aged 15-19 years are twice more likely to die during childbirth, UNICEF reports.

Sarita, 15, and her friend Mali, 14, are nothing short of stars at the middle school in Punsa village, about 25 km from the steel hub of Jamshedpur, in Jharkhand. Earlier this year, the two stopped their families from getting them married off — with a little help from “Pradeep sir”, their teacher Pradeep Kumar.

They went to each other’s homes, along with fellow students and Kumar, and successfully convinced their families in calling off the wedding plans.

In a state with the highest child marriage rate in India after Rajasthan and Bihar, according to Annual Health Survey, 2010-2011, and where child marriage among girls is as high as 44 per cent in rural areas and 21 per cent in urban centres, as National Family Health Survey 2015-2016 reported, it is a huge victory. And leading that fight is Pradeep, a lean, soft-spoken, bespectacled and balding teacher with his ‘army’ of students.

Stating that child marriage has gradually declined in areas around Jamshedpur, although stray cases still emerge, Kumar said, “When students such as Mali and Sarita bring cases to my notice I take a group of students to talk the parents out of marrying off their minor children.”

The shock fell on Mali in February this year, when her sister called her home from school. February is the harvest season, when most marriages are fixed in villages of their East Singhbhum, and neighbouring districts of eastern Jharkhand.

“There were guests at home I had never met. My mother asked me to serve them tea. I wondered why…. I was later told that I would be married into the family,” the class VIII student said.

Mali told her friend Sarita, who informed their teacher. “Pradeep-sir took some of us (students) and met Mali’s parents. He told them that child marriage is a punishable crime; we said leaving school for marriage would ruin Mali’s childhood,” Sarita said.

Besides, she added, “we told them that a child bride runs many medical risks, including death during early pregnancies.”

Sarita and her young friends know their facts. According to UNICEF data, babies of child brides are 60 per cent more likely to die before their first birthday than children of mothers who are over 19 years. Married girls aged 15-19 years are twice more likely to die during childbirth, UNICEF reports.

Within weeks, Sarita found that her parents were planning her wedding as well. Kumar, and his students, including Mali, this time went to Sarita’s home and told her elder brother Vibhishan, a former student of Kumar’s, about her predicament.

“Vibhishan never disobeys me, although he is no longer my student,” Kumar said. “After I convinced him that an educated Sarita would not only be biologically fit to marry and conceive after she is 18 but that she also stands a better chance to get a more educated and suitable groom, he spoke to his parents and convinced them.”

Imtiaz Ahmed, block development officer of Boram and also the child marriage provisional officer for the block, said while child marriage is gradually declining in areas around Jamshedpur, they still get the odd cases. “Usually we are successful in holding panchayats and dissuading (the families). But when we get a tip-off at the last moment — barely hours before the scheduled marriage — and face resistance from families, we have to register FIRs,” said Ahmed.

Back at the school, as Mali said that says she wants to be a teacher, since all village schools do not have adequate teachers, Pradeep Kumar said, “We get to know when anyone is upset in class — that’s how Sarita and Mali’s predicament was discovered. They are brave girls, and we will always support their education and help them follow their dreams.”

Child Welfare Committee chairperson Prabha Jaiswal said, “We have made the Child Marriage Prohibition Act but child marriage enjoys such social acceptance that no law or action can abate this menace. When we go to stop a marriage we are threatened and asked to back off. An attitude change is required before this social ill can be rooted out completely.”

Source: indianexpress.com