Family pressure to get married
Family Pressures to children are on to get married even when they don’t feel ready and
especially if it happens to be a female the intensities are higher.
In urban cities like Mumbai, in most cases observed and registered are that when a girl child completes her 10th, 12th , or graduation there are family pressures to get the girl married off. “Aur kitna padegi?Bus ab shadi kara do.’’(How much more will she study? Get her married off).
What is the harm if she studies further? Men on the other hand are allowed to do even Post-graduations and other further studies without too much pressure compared to their female counterparts.
It’s our conservative tradition that most families in India are following to pressurize the child to get married even when he/she does not want to go ahead with it. This tradition needs to be stopped, as it is doing no good to anyone in the society currently.
Families who force their children into getting married without the child’s complete consent should be punished.
If a girl child wants to study even after doing her graduation but is economically not completely independent to pay the high
admission fees for her further studies, she should be given concessions rates from governmental
colleges.
The number of admission seats should increase and college fees need to go down.
This will encourage even the conservative family members to allow the children to study further as much as they like and not consider marriage as an option after a minimal class of formal education.
It is an urgent request to the Maharashtra State educational bodies to check that schools and colleges do not take donations (even when many vacant seats are already available they still do take it.) Also, please improve the teaching staffs and facilities so that students are not compelled to run to private schools and colleges where in today’s date the admission fees are so high that most of the middle class students like me are not able to afford the rates laid down by them.
Written by Madhu Ahuja, Vashi, New Bombay.