Raising Age of Marriage for Women a Noble Cause But Not a Cure-All

The minimum age of marriage has always been a contentious topic of debate in India. Currently, as we know, the legal minimum age stands at 18 for women and 21 for men but since Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced on his Independence Day speech that the Centre had set up a committee to review and reconsider the minimum age of marriage for women, it's brought back the same old questions as before: should we or should we not reconsider raising the legal age of marriage for women? The Union Ministry for Women and Child Development's 10-member task force headed by former Samata Party president Jaya Jaitly is examining what kind of concerns there are with the current legal age — such as the correlation between early marriages and early motherhood, health risks for young mothers, issues of Maternal Mortality Ratio or MMR, improving maternal and child nutrition levels, etc. But is raising the minimum age a cure-all for those issues? Should India re-think the age of marriage, in a bid to lower our alarming maternal mortality rate (MMR)? Tune in to The Big Story! Producer and Host: Shorbori Purkayastha Guests: Poonam Muttreja, Executive Director of Population Foundation of India Dhirendra Pratap Singh, CEO of Milaan Foundation Editor: Shelly Walia Music: Big Bang Fuzz Listen to The Big Story podcast on: Apple: https://apple.co/2AYdLIl Saavn: http://bit.ly/2oix78C Google Podcasts: http://bit.ly/2ntMV7S Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2IyLAUQ Deezer: http://bit.ly/2Vrf5Ng Castbox: http://bit.ly/2VqZ9ur Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices