The Indian state of Rajasthan has a very high rate of early marriage. A recent study by the Population Council (Santhya, Haberland and Singh “She knew only when the garland was put around her neck”: Findings from an exploratory study on early marriage in Rajasthan, Population Council 2006) found that almost all young girls they talked to did not want to marry before 18, although many of them had done so. The opinions of the girls were not considered important. Apart from economic pressure, the main motivation was social pressure: unless girls married young, their families’ reputations would suffer. Everyone was aware that marriage before 18 was illegal, but it was very easy to evade the law. To help reduce the financial cost of weddings, the Rajasthan Government has instituted mass weddings, where many couples are married at the same time. This is intended to discourage child marriage, but it is still possible to get away with marrying an under-age girl at one of these ceremonies. Another Government attempt to delay marriage involves paying parents to delay their children’s marriages until 18. But not everyone was aware of this scheme, and even those who were aware knew of no-one who had benefited from it. If the penalties of the law were more certainly applied and if the other measures were more energetically pursued, child marriage could become a thing of the past.