Why, despite govt efforts, West Bengal continues to see underage marriages, teen pregnancies

The girl’s family contacted the NGO Nishtha, where workers helped them lodge a complaint at the region’s Namkhana police station on August 21. Police found Rinki around 1 am the following day in Dighirpar, in Falta, a town in South 24 Parganas district on the western fringe of the Sundarbans and reunited her with her family.

Seventeen-year-old Payel Adhikari (name changed to protect identity) was less lucky. Payel purportedly fell in love as a student in class 9 and “eloped with him” ahead of her secondary school examination. The two married, but when the relationship turned out to be not what she had hoped for, the minor was keen to return home. Her family, however, allegedly refused to take her back initially. It was only with the intervention and help of a friend, police and social workers that she eventually managed to return to her family. Now a student of class 11, Payel herself is an activist against child marriage.

Despite years of welfare schemes aimed at keeping girls in school and preventing child marriages, the issues of early marriages and motherhood continue to trouble West Bengal. While flagging teenage pregnancy and marriage as a major concern in the state, health minister Sharadwat Mukherjee announced last week that the state would soon launch a two-pronged awareness campaign against underage marriage and in favour of a two-child policy. He also asked district magistrates to intervene when they receive information about an impending child marriage.

Sample Registration System data show that 6.3 per cent of women marrying in West Bengal in 2024 were below 18, the highest proportion among the bigger states, against 2.1 per cent nationally.

Additionally, the latest National Family Health Survey (NFHS-6, for 2023-24), released earlier this year, found that 16.6 per cent of girls aged 15-19 in West Bengal were already mothers or pregnant. The number was up marginally from the 16.4 per cent in NFHS-5 (2019-21). Nationally, the figure dropped from 6.8 per cent in NFHS-5 to 6.7 per cent in NFHS-6. In rural Bengal, the percentage is about 20.3 per cent, up from 19.6 per cent in 2019-21.

The finding is concerning, since teenage pregnancies not only limit the mother's option to higher studies, employment and a better economic future, but also raise health concerns for both the mother and the child. Doctors also talk of higher risks of pre-term births.

In West Bengal, the burden of teen pregnancies was found to be unevenly distributed across the state. Teenage childbearing was around 27.3 per cent in Cooch Behar and about 25 per cent in Birbhum and Paschim Medinipur, compared to 4.9 per cent in Kolkata. Experts cite the “greater access to education, healthcare and employment opportunities” in urban areas than rural districts to explain the gap.

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According to Dr Saswati Ghosh, a professor and women's rights activist, poverty remained a major driver for teenage pregnancies. “Poor families marry off daughters because it means one less mouth to feed. Many families may also arrange marriages when girls elope or become pregnant to avoid social disgrace,” she explains.

The urban-rural disparity is visible on the ground, where hospitals in rural districts report a higher burden of girls becoming mothers while still in their teens.

At Kultali block hospital in South 24 Parganas, a girl below 15 gave birth in June last year. In the same month, 31 girls aged 15-19 gave birth to children at the hospital. Five girls aged 19 or younger were having their second child, while a 19-year-old delivered her third, said sources in the hospital. In Canning-II, officials found that around 30 per cent of deliveries were to minors.

A 2025 study undertaken at Tamralipto Government Medical College in Purba Medinipur district found 21 per cent of 205 pregnant women attending its antenatal clinic were teenagers.

For Mina Das, secretary of the NGO Nishtha, the problem was both social and economic and one that had “not received enough attention because West Bengal is widely perceived as a progressive state on women's rights”, she says.

“There is a persistent belief that marriage is a girl’s ultimate destination. Lack of job opportunities also creates a sense of futility,” says Das, arguing that girls need better employment prospects after schools, greater security and more social support.

Ghosh also pushes for schools “to become more engaging” to retain adolescents and contain dropouts and prevent early marriages. Irregular classes, inadequate teachers and teachers being diverted to government duties can weaken the incentive to remain in school, she explains.

An audit report of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) made public this year shows West Bengal's implementation of the Samagra Shiksha scheme found a 28-42 per cent transition loss between upper-primary and higher-secondary levels. It cited financial hardship, early marriage, unwillingness to study and migration for work among the reasons students discontinued their education, and found 520 schools without teachers.

Once girls leave school, their options can narrow sharply, particularly in poor rural households where employment opportunities for young women are limited.

Economic distress can reinforce that thinking. “Adult men in rural Bengal often migrate to other states for work, leaving women to manage households and sometimes making parents more anxious about their adolescent daughters' safety. In such circumstances, early marriage can appear to offer a daughter greater security,” says Mritunjoy Ghosh, a social activist from the Bankura area. Recurring cyclones hitting the state in recent years, such as Amphan (2020) and Yaas (2021), have also destroyed livelihoods in vulnerable areas, pushing families into sudden poverty, he adds. In such circumstances, marriage can become a coping mechanism.

And so, while for some girls poverty and school dropout narrow choices, pushing them towards early marriages, for others, an adolescent relationship can bring family and community pressure to marry, leading to pregnancies soon afterwards.

In Cooch Behar, a 16-year-old was reportedly found to be four months pregnant after repeated sexual assault. Her daily-wage-worker parents often left her alone while working. She allegedly remained silent after being threatened. The family discovered the pregnancy after noticing physical changes. The case shows how sexual violence, inadequate protection and a girl's inability to seek help can also lead to early motherhood, says Das.

The West Bengal government’s Kanyashree, launched in 2013 by the Mamata Banerjee-led previous Trinamool Congress government in the state and renamed Kanya Ratna by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government formed after this year’s assembly election in West Bengal, was designed to encourage girls to remain in school and thus prevent early marriages. The state claims 96.3 lakh girls have benefited since its launch, while 15.5 lakh girls were enrolled in the annual scholarship component in 2025-26. The BJP government has increased the annual scholarship from Rs 1,000 to Rs 2,000, while the one-time grant of Rs 25,000 for eligible girls turning 18 remains unchanged.

But the cases of girls being married or becoming pregnant early suggest that financial incentives alone may not be enough when decisions about marriage remain largely with their families. The BJP government in the state has identified Suti-I, Suti-II and Shamsherganj in Murshidabad as child-marriage hotspots and plans targeted interventions in the three blocks.

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A recent case in Murshidabad shows how crucial such intervention can be.

A 14-year-old Class 9 student was purportedly studying at home when she learnt that her parents had found a groom for her. Relatives had gathered nearby and preparations for a feast were underway. When she asked when the wedding would take place, she was told it would be the same day. She did not want to marry and called a friend, who alerted Childline. Police and child-protection officials reached the village and stopped the wedding. The girl told officials she wanted to continue studying and eventually “stand on her own feet”.

“For the girl, education meant independence. For the family, marriage offered security,” says Kamal Hossain, a Panchayat Samiti member of Murshidabad’s Mahadev Nagar Gram Panchayat.