‘Educate kids about saints, not sex’

Civil society groups are aghast at a parliamentary panel’s observation that sex education and sex before marriage is “unethical, unhealthy and immoral”. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Apr 18, 2009, 24:49:19 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Civil society groups are aghast at a parliamentary panel’s observation that sex education and sex before marriage is “unethical, unhealthy and immoral”.

The Parliamentary Committee on Petitions has even urged the government to withdraw the Adolescent Education Programme introduced in schools last year. The committee headed by the BJP’s M. Venkaiah Naidu includes members from the Congress, Samajwadi Party and Left parties.

The panel had submitted its report to the Rajya Sabha after a petition was filed by Delhi parent Asha Sharma and Mumbai schoolteacher Pratiba Naithani. Both had contended that the curriculum would corrupt India’s youth and lead to single parent families.

Said Indira Jaisingh, senior advocate and head of Delhi-based think tank Lawyers’ Collective, “It is not proper comment. There is nothing illegal in having sex before marriage.”

Ranjana Kumari, director of the Centre for Social Research believes that linking pre-marital sex with morality is wrong. “It is a decision of an individual and one should respect it,” she said. “Pre-marital sex is happening and we should accept the reality,” she said, emphasising on improving children’s knowledge of protection required against sexually transmitted diseases.

The committee came to its conclusions after discussing the matter with educationists, officials from the HRD ministry and National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO). It blamed the ministry for failing to prevent introduction of a contentious syllabus in schools.

The committee said the new curriculum should only include education about hygiene and physiological changes taking place in adolescents, especially girls.

The committee said the curriculum should commence from the 8th class and include moral education and personality and character development.

Even though the legal age of marriage is 21 for men and 18 for women, the law debars consensual sex before 16. The Indian Penal Code considers having sex with a girl below 16 as rape. Various studies have shown a growing trend of teenagers having sex. The NACO has also found that a large number of young men engage in casual sex with sex workers.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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