BOUND BY DISASTER

Across South Asia, droughts, floods and displacement are fueling marriages of adolescent girls as a survival tactic

- REETIKA REVATHY SUBRAMANIAN

ON DECEMBER 26, 2004, a tsunami in the Indian Ocean tore through the coastlines, claiming over 0.25 million lives. In Tamil Nadu’s Cuddalore district, most of the people who died were women. In the aftermath, families, desperate to shield their adolescent daughters from uncertainty, hurried them into marriages—often with men twice their age.

Two decades later, in drought-stricken Marathwada region of Maharashtra, catastrophe moves differently. This May, temperatures crossed 44°C, wells dried up and fodder vanished. In districts like Beed and Osmanabad, families again turned to early marriage for their daughters—not as tradition, but as a survival tactic. Communities hastily arranged “gate-cane” weddings—alliances fixed and solemnised within hours or a couple of days—ahead of the sugarcane harvest, when labour contractors would be scouting for couples. Young brides may soon have been seen in sugarcane farms, sickle in hand.

One disaster struck overnight. The other has been simmering for years. But in both cases, adolescent girls were forced into marriage under the weight of crisis.