Bengal’s Kanyashree Paradox: Why Govt’s Cash Benefits Have Failed to Stop Child Marriage

Balurghat (Bengal): In the past few years, Bengal has expanded its cash-transfer schemes for girls and women, but reports and testimonies from schools, health centres and field workers show that minors have continued to be married off in large numbers in the state.

Recent data from the Sample Registration System (SRS) released in September 2025 has revealed that the state now records the highest number of child marriages in India. The SRS 2025 report noted that West Bengal leads the nation with 6.3% of all current marriages involving girls under 18. This is nearly triple the national average of 2.1%.

Even more telling is the fact that many women are married off immediately after they reach the legal threshold. Official figures from the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5), conducted between 2019 and 2021 and released in 2021 shows that 41.6% of women aged 20-24 in West Bengal were married before the legal age of 18.

This has health impacts which are far reaching. Swapna Barman, an ASHA worker from the Buniadpur area of Dakshin Dinajpur, is no stranger to this. Barman has recently encountered a sickly child whose mother suffers from anaemia and several other diseases. The mother, Barman mentions, is a minor. Upon speaking to her, Barman says, she discovered that she was married at 12 years old, to another minor who was 16 at that time. Barman learnt of her case in the course of treating the girl during her pregnancy.

When asked for comment, the state minister for women and child development and social welfare, Shashi Panja, offered no response.

Cash transfers fail to incentivise families

The West Bengal government has long showcased its welfare models, such as Kanyashree Prakalpa and Rupashree Prakalpa, as proof of its commitment to women’s welfare. Under Kanyashree Prakalpa, which started in 2013, a conditional cash transfer scheme to keep minor girls from low-income families in school, which now has 8.9 million beneficiaries, unmarried girls between the ages of 13 and 18 receive Rs 1,000 annually, and those over 18, who continue their education, receive a one-time grant of Rs 25,000. 

Meanwhile, under the sister scheme, Rupashree Prakalpa, started in 2018, the state government provides another Rs 25,000 for marriage expenses of the bride in low-income families, provided she is over 18 years.

As the data mentioned above shows, despite these schemes and repeated awareness campaigns, the prevalence of underage marriage has shown little decline.

“The number of child brides indicates the deepening of poverty in the state and reduced value of education as a driver of economic mobility of the rural as well as poor urban families. The direct cash transfer to bank accounts often thus acts as a reserve for dowry as well as meeting household expenses and is not often related to the girl child's education expenses, like buying of learning tools etc.,” economist Ishita Mukhopadhyay told The Wire.

The geography of the crisis is uneven, but severe. In districts such as Murshidabad, Purba Medinipur, Birbhum, Malda and Purulia, NFHS 5 data shows that more than half of women in their early twenties were married before turning 18. In some pockets, the rates cross 55% and rise to 57-58%. 

The paradox is sharpest in Purba Medinipur, where NFHS 5 data shows that female literacy is above 88%, yet child marriage still affects well more than half of the women population. This suggests that schooling, in many cases, functions less as a bridge to work or to go for higher studies and more as a socially-acceptable waiting period before marriage.

Teachers say that they see the numbers play out in real time inside schools. Nandita Das, headmistress of Balurghat’s Ayodhya Kalidasi Vidyaniketan, said, “After summer vacations, Puja, or long holidays, we go to school to find many Class 9 and 10 students are married. Some were married off by their families, while others did it out of their own volition.”

“Just as providing bicycles to 12.7 million female students under the ‘Sabuj Sathi’ scheme hasn’t been able to keep all of them in school, the benefits of the Kanyashree scheme haven’t been able to stop the trend of early marriage. This is the factual reality,” said Tuhin Mondal, another teacher from the school.

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Health impact

The biological cost of this social failure is measured in ledgers at health centre across the state. 

In Birbhum, between April and June 2025 alone, the government's data shows that 3,443 minor girls were admitted to government health centres for deliveries. In this time, the administration has claimed that it has prevented 190 child marriages. In South Dinajpur, official records show 7,000 child marriages and 4,095 teenage mothers in a single year. In West Medinipur, 10,755 minors became pregnant in one year.

“Not only in rural areas, but it is also happening in the slum areas of the city among the poor,” noted Soma Bhowmik, who works at an NGO in Murshidabad. 

“Since the male guardians of the family stay away, in many cases, a child's marriage is seen as a form of relief from responsibility. While working, we realise that raising awareness along with highlighting that this is a crime with severe legal punishment is yielding some results,” she said.

Even where families wait for the legal age, the SRS data indicates how tightly marriage is clustered just after the threshold. At 44.9%, according to SRS data, West Bengal also recorded the highest number of women marrying in the 18-20 age group. This concentration suggests that for many households, the social target has simply shifted from child marriage to earliest possible legal marriage. This leaves little expansion of the window for education or skilling.

Social welfare officials say they are trying to blend technology and awareness of legal deterrence with support. District administrations are also undertaking door-to-door campaigns to counsel students and track vulnerable minors.

“Work is ongoing to create lists of minors aged between 12 and 18 [in the state]. Volunteers visit their homes in villages, to get them all back to school, highlighting the physical impact of early marriage,” Mijanur Rahman, director of the non-governmental organisation Sakti Bahini, told The Wire. “But two issues keep resurfacing – lack of awareness and financial distress.”

Legal enforcement remains weak in the state. Typically, only about 100 cases of child marriages are registered annually under the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act (PCMA).

Authorities often choose to take written undertakings from parents rather than criminalising poor households.

“Often, when we reach the area, we find the marriage has already taken place,” claimed social worker Suraj Das from Murshidabad. Das works at the organisation Child Marriage Protection Group of South Dinajpur “The police do not want to intervene without a written complaint. Often, we face the wrath of local people asking why we are spoiling the future of a poor family,” he added.

The paradox continues to grow. More money is being spent than ever by the government for these schemes, yet for nearly half of the state's young women, the fundamental life trajectory remains unchanged.

Translated from Bangla by Aparna Bhattacharya.

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