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Grassroots Campaign Takes Child Marriage Awareness to Katkari Doorsteps
John Singarayar, SVD
The door-to-door awareness campaign, which wrapped up last week, took facilitators deep into areas where traditions often overshadow legal provisions. Armed with little more than pamphlets, conviction, and cultural sensitivity, the team navigated narrow forest paths and scattered settlements to reach families who rarely see government officials or social workers.
What set this initiative apart was its collaborative backbone. Janseva Society did not work in isolation. From the outset, organisers networked extensively with panchayat officers and tahsildar officials, building bridges between community-level governance and grassroots action. These partnerships proved crucial—local officials provided vital intelligence about which hamlets needed immediate attention and lent administrative weight to the campaign’s messaging.
“We did not go in lecturing,” explained campaign coordinator Manisha Kapare. “We sat with families, listened to their concerns, and then shared what early marriage actually costs—not just in legal terms, but in real lives.”
The statistics they presented were sobering. Girls married before 18 face significantly higher risks during pregnancy and childbirth. Their children are more likely to be malnourished and underweight. Education stops, sometimes abruptly, ending dreams before they properly begin. Boys marry young and shoulder responsibilities they are unprepared for, perpetuating cycles of poverty that grip entire communities.
The campaign’s strategy was deliberate: awareness paired with enforcement potential. When families understood that panchayat officers and tahsildar officials were part of the network monitoring child marriages, the message carried different gravity. It was not just social workers appealing to conscience—it was the system signalling consequences.
Volunteers engaged elders, spoke with young people separately, and addressed mothers who often hold quiet influence over family decisions. They explained that the legal marriage age—18 for women, 21 for men—is not arbitrary bureaucracy but a safeguard built on medical evidence and social welfare principles.
The Katkari community, listed as a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group, has long practised early marriages as a cultural norm. Economic pressures compound the issue. Families struggling to make ends meet sometimes see a daughter’s marriage as one less mouth to feed, one less worry to carry.
But conversations are shifting. In hamlet after hamlet, the Janseva team found people willing to reconsider. Fathers who had assumed early marriage was inevitable started questioning. Mothers shared fears they had never voiced before. Young girls, some barely teenagers, quietly admitted they wanted to study further.
“One mother told us she was married at 14 and had her first child at 15,” recalled volunteer Priya Gaikwad. “She looked at her own daughter and said, ‘I do not want this for her.’ That moment—that is why we do this work.”
The campaign also emphasised community responsibility. Child marriage is not just a family matter; it is a social issue requiring collective vigilance. The involvement of panchayat and tahsildar officers reinforced this—creating reporting mechanisms that families could trust and support systems that actually functioned.
Janseva Society covered over 18 hamlets during the month, reaching an estimated 100 families. Follow-up visits are already planned, with administrative officials committed to continued monitoring. Real change, organisers acknowledge, does not happen in 30 days. But foundations can be laid.
As the campaign concluded, several village elders pledged to discourage child marriages within their communities. Three families postponed weddings they had been planning. Small victories, perhaps, but in the fight against entrenched practices, every postponement is a childhood reclaimed.
The organization now plans to expand the initiative to neighbouring tribal areas, proving that awareness—when delivered with respect, persistence, and official backing—can reach even the most isolated doorsteps.
