Over the past two decades, India has made notable progress in addressing early marriage and gender-based violence. According to the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-6) for 2023–2024, only 20.1% of women aged 20–24 were married before reaching the legal age of 18. For comparison, in the 2005–2006 survey, that figure stood at 47.4%.
The survey also recorded a marked decline in spousal violence. Among married women aged 18–49, the share reporting violence by a spouse fell from 29.2% to 22.3%. At the same time, the proportion of women aged 19–29 who experienced sexual violence before the age of 18 dropped from 1.2% to 0.7%.
Despite the overall decline in early marriage and spousal violence, these problems remain significantly more common in rural India than in urban areas. This shows that progress has not yet been evenly distributed, and rural regions still need additional support and expanded social programmes.
For many decades, India has remained one of the countries where early marriage and gender-based violence were considered serious social challenges. The steady decline in these indicators suggests that legislative measures, broader access to girls' education, women's support programmes, and changing social attitudes are beginning to have a sustained effect.
