Child Marriage On The Rise Again — When Will We Stop Letting Down Our Girls?
Kerala’s pride in progress just took a brutal hit — eighteen child marriages in ten months, half from one district. One question? How can a state that tops literacy charts still fail to protect its daughters, proof that our silence is the real accomplice.
Data from the Women and Child Development reveals that between April 2024 and January 15, 2025, the state recorded 18 incidents of child marriage — the highest in the last three years, up from 14 in 2023–24 and 12 in 2022–23.
And Thrissur alone accounts for 10 of these cases. Malappuram follows with three, Palakkad with two, and Thiruvananthapuram, Alappuzha, and Wayanad reported one each.
Is this the same Kerala we call “progressive”?
What makes the story even darker is the collapse in prevention. In 2022–23, officials foiled 108 child marriages. That fell to 52 in 2023–24, and only 48 between April 2024 and January 2025. The state’s own ‘Ponvakk’ scheme, which rewards ₹2,500 to informants who expose child marriages, has saved 8 marriages in 2022–23, 7 in 2023–24, and 10 so far this year. Yet, the spike in actual incidents shows that more and more cases are slipping through.
WCD officials told The New Indian Express that the apparent rise could partly be due to stronger reporting systems — but that’s little consolation when minors are still being dragged into abusive unions. Because let’s not sugar-coat it — child marriage is violence. It is rape disguised as ritual, servitude masked as culture, and control parading as protection.
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Just last week, this violence was stopped in time in Malappuram. The Kadampuzha Police foiled the marriage of a 14-year-old girl to her 22-year-old cousin, acting on a tip-off from a local resident. Officers arrived mid-ceremony and booked 10 family members under the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act. The minor was rescued, handed to the Child Welfare Committee, and later moved to the Snehitha Gender Help Desk under the Kudumbashree Mission.
The Kerala State Commission for Protection of Child Rights has taken suo motu cognisance of the case and demanded a report from district officials.
But how many others are not saved in time? Yet, the spike in actual incidents shows that more and more cases are slipping through.
An expert said that economic strain after the pandemic, social acceptance of early marriage, and the regressive belief that girls are “safer” when married young are driving this trend. A Kerala Padanam 2.0 study even shows that the mindset persists among sections of the urban middle class — people who talk progress but practise patriarchy.
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“Even in educated homes, there’s still pressure to restrict women to domestic roles,” an expert said, adding that outdated religious customs, low political awareness, and online networks that normalise early marriages have made things worse.
Social activist J. Sandhya, former member of the Kerala State Commission for Protection of Child Rights, told The New Indian Express that some of these cases are runaways — young girls manipulated through social media traps. “Children are easily influenced online, and social media often has an exploitative side. Ultimately, parenting plays a crucial role,” she warned.
While Malappuram has long been infamous for child marriages, it also leads in prevention — stopping 56 marriages in 2022–23, 21 in 2023–24, and 17 this year. Idukki, meanwhile, prevented eight and reported none. In contrast, Thrissur, the current hotspot, prevented only three.
The WCD Department, in coordination with the University of Kerala’s Department of Demography, is now conducting a detailed study to understand why child marriages are resurging. But do we really need another report to tell us what we already know — that society still treats girls as property, not people?
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Across India, the fight continues. In Uttar Pradesh, the government launched the ‘Bal Vivah ko Na’ campaign to make the state child-marriage-free by 2030. With a child-marriage rate of 15.8%, below the national average of 23.3%, UP has already prevented over 2,000 child marriages in five years.
Kerala has its own Ponvakk initiative and legal framework, but laws alone don’t protect girls — people do.
Child marriage is not a custom; it’s a crime. It is the theft of childhood, the silencing of ambition, and too often, the beginning of lifelong violence.
If a society can’t keep its daughters safe, what progress are we really celebrating?
