DAW 22nd December 2025, Mains Answer Writting 2026
Question
“Legal reforms without social reform may lead to unintended consequences.” Discuss this statement in the context of child marriage laws in India. (150 Words, 10 Marks).
Model Answer
Approach:
Introduction:
Briefly highlight India’s legal progress against child marriage (PCMA, 2006; NFHS decline) and introduce the core argument that law alone is insufficient without social reform.
Body:
Acknowledge legal achievements – deterrence through FIRs, awareness via Bal Vivah Mukt Bharat Abhiyan, declining prevalence, and institutional expansion (CMPOs).
Critically analyse unintended consequences – evasion through betrothals, underground practices, over-criminalisation from raising marriage age, and gendered/economic backlash.
Explain structural limitations of law – poverty, patriarchy, safety concerns, uneven state capacity, and low conviction rates.
Substantiate with examples – Assam’s decline, Kanyashree vs Rupashree, Bihar’s cycle scheme, Odisha’s preventive governance (SSAP, ADVIKA).
Demonstrate synergy – show how education, community leadership, and adolescent agency amplify legal effectiveness.
Conclusion:
Reiterate that durable change requires synchronising legal enforcement with social transformation, and link the argument to SDG-5, Target 5.3, stressing urgency given India’s global burden and the need to accelerate progress towards 2030.
Introduction:
India’s experience with child marriage illustrates the limits of law when social norms remain unchanged. While legal interventions- most notably the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act (PCMA), 2006- have contributed to a sharp decline in prevalence (from 47.4% in 2005–06 to 23.3% in 2019–21, **National Family Health Survey-5), the persistence of child marriage in specific regions and communities underlines a central concern: law without social reform can generate avoidance, criminalisation, and perverse incentives rather than durable change.
Body:
The fifth UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) is to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls. Within this SDG, Target 5.3 is to eliminate all harmful practices, including child marriage, as well as early and forced marriages, and female genital mutilation.
What legal reforms have achieved:
Deterrence and visibility: Arrests and FIRs have emerged as strong deterrents; awareness of child marriage laws is now near-universal, with 99% of respondents reporting exposure to the Bal Vivah Mukt Bharat Abhiyan through NGOs, schools, and panchayats.
Quantifiable gains: NGO-led evidence (Just Rights for Children) reports 69% decline among girls and 72% among boys in recent years; Assam leads with an 84% decline.
Institutional expansion: Over 54,900 Child Marriage Prohibition Officers (CMPOs) appointed; reporting comfort has risen (63% “very comfortable”).
In 2023, UNICEF estimated that 64 crore girls got married in childhood, with a whopping third of them in India alone. It added that progress needs to happen 20 times faster than it has been to reach the 2030 target.
These gains show law matters- but only up to a point.
Unintended consequences when social reform lags:
Evasion and informality:
Families increasingly resort to child betrothals, secret ceremonies, or delayed registration to bypass enforcement- prompting the Supreme Court of India to warn that betrothals are used to evade punishment.
This shifts the practice underground, weakening monitoring and child protection.
Criminalisation of communities:
The proposal to raise women’s marriage age to 21 years (PCMA Amendment Bill, 2021) risks over-criminalising customary practices without altering drivers. Notably, 61% of women aged 20–24 married before 21, implying widespread non-compliance if social readiness is absent.
Gendered and economic backlash:
In high-poverty contexts, fear of legal action can lead families to withdraw girls from school, restrict mobility, or accelerate informal unions to “secure” safety- counterproductive outcomes given that education is the strongest protective factor (48% of girls with no education married early vs. 4% with higher education).
Mixed policy signals:
While schemes like Kanyashree (West Bengal) incentivise delayed marriage and education, marriage-linked transfers (e.g., Rupashree) may inadvertently reinforce marriage as the endpoint, diluting norm change.
Structural reasons law alone cannot suffice:
Poverty and insecurity: 91% cite poverty; 44% cite safety concerns. Law does not substitute for livelihoods, transport, or safe public spaces.
Patriarchy and norms: Child marriage is embedded in ideas of honour, chastity, and gender roles- domains where statutes have limited reach.
Uneven state capacity: Wide inter-State variation (e.g., West Bengal, Bihar, Tripura above national average) reflects differences in governance, not statute books.
Low conviction rates: Rising registrations under PCMA (NCRB) without commensurate convictions risk symbolic compliance.
Evidence that social reform amplifies legal reform:
Community-led prevention: Partnerships with faith leaders, youth groups, and PRIs under Bal Vivah Mukt Bharat have raised reporting and prevention.
Education-first strategies: States prioritising school retention, bicycles, sanitation, and scholarships show faster declines. For example Bihar's Mukhyamantri Balika Cycle Yojna.
Preventive governance (Odisha): A shift from post-violation enforcement to adolescent-centred, hyper-local vigilance (SSAP 2024, ADVIKA) has prevented 14,000+ marriages, with thousands of villages declaring themselves child-marriage-free- demonstrating how norm change + services make law effective.
Conclusion:
India’s experience highlights that law without social reform can lead to evasion and backlash, while law supported by education, economic security, safety, and community engagement ensures lasting change. Legal firmness must therefore be matched by social transformation.
This approach is crucial to achieve SDG-5 (Gender Equality), especially Target 5.3 on ending child marriage. Progress is measured by the share of women aged 20–24 married before 18. As warned by Girls Not Brides, failure here will undermine at least nine SDGs. With 64 crore girls globally- one-third in India- married in childhood, progress must accelerate 20-fold to realise a child-marriage-free India by 2030.