www.borjournals.com Open Access Journals Blue Ocean Research Journals 520 Prevent Child Marriage: An Essay With Special Reference To Kanyashree Prakalpa Of West Bengal

Child marriage is one of serious social crisis in the world today. A marriage is regarded as a child marriage in technical sense when the matrimonial tie occurs between a minor boy and a minor girl or one of them does not reach at the legal age of marriage. Practically it is a form of early and forced alliance that is unfortunately considered to be a traditional norm and practice. Child marriage is a serious human right violation because it has a debilitating impact on the lives specially of girls. It occurs particularly in developing countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. South Asia accounts for almost half of all child marriages that occur globally. India is one of the countries in this region where girl child marriage is an unbending social problem. In spite of taking some legal and regulatory measures the prevalence of girl child marriage a concern for India till today. In some states in India more than 50 % girls come in laws ' house in their childhood. West Ben-gal is one of those states. The present Government of West Bengal in order to prevent the prevalence of girl child marriage and to the holistic development of girls introduced Kanyshree Prakalpa in the year 2013. It is a State Government spon-sored conditional direct cash transfer scheme for underprivileged girls. The scheme is designed in such a way that reduc-ing the tendency of drop out from school; it motives girls of poor families to pursue higher study and at the same time pro-tect them from the harmful social custom of marriage at young age