Amaravati: Even as Guntur district becomes home to a spanking new capital city, it is acquiring notoriety for quite another reason: the practice of child marriages remains rampant in its Palnadu, Tenali and Guntur divisions.
The officials stopped 90 child marriages last year and about 25 until now in 2016.
What is shocking is that they are going unnoticed -- and unreported, with parents performing the marriages in temples and places far away from their home towns.
Most parents still hold on to the notion that education up to Class X is enough for girls, the “SSC pass or fail” being regarded the most minimum qualification to marry them off speedily. It’s a trend that is posing a major threat to the well-being of girls in most families.
The literacy rate among women is very low in the district, standing at around 29 per cent in Bollapalli mandal, 38 per cent in Veldurthi and Nuzendla mandals, 42 per cent in Savalyapuram, Eepuru, Bellam-konda and Durgi mandals, 44 per cent in Rentachintala, Atcham-peta, Rajupalem and other adjacent mandals of the Palnadu region. Parents with low literacy themselves and working as daily wage labourers usually opt not to educate their daughters, preferring to rush them into marriage.
A social activist of Bollapalli, D. Hemalatha, said that Palnadu was a hotbed of Naxalite and Maoist activities, which was preventing parents from going in for higher education for their girl children. The suppression of Maoist activities had led to factionism which too was making parents in the rural areas stop their daughters going to school at the upper primary or high school level.
A teacher, P. Raju said that students had to travel 5-10 km from their villages to reach ZP high schools, which was a major deterrent for many parents and one of the causes of the high dropout rate of girl children. He said that parents feared that their daughters may get drawn into love affairs.
Purohits said that they could not stop performing child marriages as they had to live and work in those villages. They said the government should raise awareness among parents about it and strictly implement the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act.
