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Saba was married at the age of 17, after she was
“sexually abused” by her “second cousin”. “When
I shared this with my parents, they refused to
believe me. It started when I was six or seven years
old, and when my parents got to know, they did not take it
well.” She met a guy at the age of 17, who claimed he
wanted to end her childhood suffering. But, she realised
within a year of marriage that she had not made the
right decision.

In another account in the remote village of Doodiya in Madhya Pradesh, 11-year-old and
already married Nikita said, “My uncle’s daughter got married when she turned 5. In fact, I am late.”
And those stories aren’t unique, in fact it is shared by 1.5 million girls in India. As per UNICEF reports,
on an average, 27% of girl children in India are married off before their 18th birthday, 7% by the time
they are 15. Be it child marriage, education, employment, or the exercise of fundamental rights, India is
still lagging behind in gender equality. One may wonder, why, in spite of regulations like The Prohibition
of Child Marriage Act, 2006, India ranks the highest in the world in the number of child marriages?
To answer that, one has to delve deep into the socio-political and economic structure harboured by the country.