Sex education: Why India should go all the way

[Guest guest]

Sex education: Why India should go all the way

26 Apr 2009, 0049 hrs IST, Insiya Amir, TNN

The lesson that Indian leaders seem to take from sex education: Prevention is

better than cure. But this may not be the best formula for a country with a

high incidence of child marriages and teenage pregnancies.

Experts say that the case for sex education in India is quite different from in

the West because it is `legitimate' here for young people to have sex. According

to the National Family Health Survey conducted by the International Institute

for Population Sciences (IIPS) and Macro International in 2005-06, 12% women

aged between 15-19 years are mothers.

The survey said that one in six Indian women aged 15-19 starts to have children.

Dr Sunil Mehra, director of the MAMTA Health Institute for Mother and Child,

says, " Youth in India needs sex education more than in any other country since

child marriage ensures that you not only have sex at a young age, you also have

teenage pregnancy. "

Contrast this with the received wisdom of our politicians. The Committee on

Petitions headed by the BJP's Venkaiah Naidu is a cross-party group up of nine

Rajya Sabha members. The Committee has said there should be no sex education in

schools because it promotes promiscuity and India's " social and cultural ethos

are such that sex education has absolutely no place in it. "

The Committee directed its outrage at the human resource development ministry's

(HRD) Adult Education Programme (AEP). Launched in 2005 and backed by the

National Aids Control Organization (NACO), the AEP's focus is safer sex, as well

as the physical and mental development of 14-18-year-olds. But the Committee

said that it was " highly embarrassed " by the HRD ministry's curriculum and

insisted that pre-marital sex, together with sex outside marriage, is " immoral,

unethical and unhealthy " . It also said that consensual sex before the age of 16

" amounts to rape " .

But Mehra is one of many who point to the facts. Child marriage means huge

numbers of adolescent Indians indulge in " legal " sexual activity. The IIPS says

that 47.4% of all women aged 20 to 24 are married by the time they are 18. About

18% are married by the time they are 15. Mehra says politicians have long

promoted regressive policy on the pretext of culture. " It is due to this

so-called culture that many young girls are forced into marriage and sex and

early pregnancy, " he says.

Sex education can also help with India's fight against Aids. Government

statistics indicate that 40% of new sexually transmitted infections are in the

15-29 age group. More than 31% of all reported Aids cases occur in this age

group, which indicates that young Indians are a high-risk demographic.

But all is not lost. A four-year study by MAMTA underlines the difference good

sex education classes can make. The study was conducted in four schools in

Haryana from 2004. Two schools were in urban Rewari; the other two in rural

Bawal. Five-hundred students participated. Sex education classes led 78% of the

rural schoolgirls and 33% of the urban to declare they would decline sex without

a condom. It was a startling rise in condom-awareness. Before the classes, just

5% of the rural schoolgirls and 10% of the urban knew about the need for a

condom.

Ranjana Kumari, director of the Centre for Social Research says sex education

achieves many goals missed by a blinkered Parliamentary Committee. Not least

sexual abuse. A nationwide study by the Department of Women and Child

Development says that 53.2% children have faced one or more forms of sexual

abuse and at least half the perpetrators were known to the child. " We have to

educate youth so they can protect themselves, " says Kumari.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Sex-education-Why-India-should-go-all-the-way\

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