There are few issues as tricky for governments and societies to determine as the legal age of consent. In every country, the debate has swung between criminality and freedom, protecting young people from exploitation and denying them their civil rights. Legal systems have historically struggled to strike a balance between biological development, changing social mores and rapidly transforming interpersonal dynamics.
This conundrum has become stark in an ongoing debate around the 2012 Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO).
There are few issues as tricky for governments and societies to determine as the legal age of consent. In every country, the debate has swung between criminality and freedom, protecting young people from exploitation and denying them their civil rights. Legal systems have historically struggled to strike a balance between biological development, changing social mores and rapidly transforming interpersonal dynamics.
This conundrum has become stark in an ongoing debate around the 2012 Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO). The stringent law was created at a time when crimes against children were rising, and it was drafted to ensure that no offender could escape on a technicality. A clear line was drawn with the age of consent at 18. But a consequence of such tough provisions has been a raft of cases when people who consensually entered into sexual and romantic relationships found themselves on the wrong side of the law because they were a few months shy of the legal age. Even the Supreme Court, while delivering a landmark verdict on abortion rights last month, explicitly stated that women under 18 engaging in consensual sexual activity ought to have access to safe abortions, notwithstanding a mandatory reporting obligation under POCSO that meant that the identity of the minor needed to be disclosed. The Karnataka high court has now told the Law Commission of India to reconsider the age of consent as stated in POCSO.
As is evident, the debate around the age of consent is vexed both locally and internationally. The courts and the government will need to keep in mind the peculiarity of each case while putting a high premium on consensual relationships. Beyond that, determining the age of consent is a job where all stakeholders – society, the legal fraternity and policymakers – need to come together and deliberate on what the best way forward would be to ensure a safe, free and promising future for India’s young.
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