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Paper short abstract:

The choice to marry early for girls in rural India is played out in the presence of a viable alternative of continuing schooling. This paper is based on a project in Bihar, India to study the life outcomes of girls in the context of state-led programs of increasing access to secondary schools.

Paper long abstract:

In a society typified by strict gendered norms, girls are expected to display modesty and respectability. The norm of marrying girls early, that is, before attaining of the legal age, is in keeping with these concerns of respectability. For girls, marrying early often implies dropping out of school. State-led programs intended to increase access to secondary schools have led to a slow movement of delaying of marriage for girls. Cessation of the early marriage norm and continuing of schooling has implications for other life choices and outcomes for girls, stemming from exercise of greater autonomy. In 2006, the Government of Bihar introduced a girls’ bicycle program to increase girls’ enrolment in secondary education. Every girl who enrolled in class 9 (penultimate year of secondary school) was provided a one-time cash transfer by the government to purchase a bicycle for the girl to travel to school. This paper is based on the fieldwork conducted in Bihar as part of the Cycle to Empowerment Project (CTEP) undertaken in 2016 and funded by the International Growth Centre. There is a noticeable decline in the practice of early marriage with more girls completing secondary schooling. This paper presents mixed method insights that affirms the trend and contributes to the understanding of the marriage-schooling trade-off in the lives of the girls who are at the centre of the aspiration-anxiety matrix generated from the state led educational campaigns in a developing country context.