Abstract
Adolescence is a vulnerable period in one’s life. It is essential to understand the factors that influence adolescent social, psychological, and psychosocial development for planning effective social service delivery systems to help adolescents survive the many risks that threaten their well-being. Of the 1.2 billion adolescents aged 10–19 years worldwide, 243 million, roughly 20 % live in India. Yet, in India, there is very little research on adolescent social, psychological, and psychosocial development. Research on Indian adolescents remains limited to fertility. Despite the Child Marriage Restraint Act of 1978, which sets the legal age at marriage for women at 18, almost one in three adolescents aged 15–19 was married in 1998–1999. Available data on adolescent reproductive health presented in this chapter suggest that Indian adolescent girls lack adequate control over making reproductive decisions. When poverty is combined with discrimination, outcomes can be harsh on the lives of adolescent girls in particular. One of the horrific outcomes of this disadvantage is the trafficking in adolescent girls. Girls living in slums are particularly vulnerable to trafficking. In the metropolitan area of Calcutta alone, more than one million children and adolescents live in slums. Nearly 60 % of sex workers in Delhi brothels were found to be adolescent girls. The proportion of trafficked adolescent girls is highest in West Bengal. Moreover, almost all parents of the trafficked girls were illiterate and about 90 % of these girls were sexually abused during childhood. Almost all the factors, such as the number of children, likelihood of contraceptive use, and prenatal visit, vary widely across states. Policies and programs for promoting adolescent health in India will demand more research on adolescents while taking into consideration the existing state-wide variations in several aspects of adolescent well-being will be examined in this chapter.
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Acknowledgments
I would like to thank former Dean of School of Education, Osmania University, and Dr. S. Rama Murthy for sharing their school survey data with me.
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Pillai, V.K., Gupta, R. (2014). Adolescent Girls and Health in India. In: Cherry, A., Dillon, M. (eds) International Handbook of Adolescent Pregnancy. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-8026-7_18
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