Age for consensual sex to be reduced from 18 to 16. Ask 16 year olds the spelling of "consensual" and 50% would misspell it. Ask them its meaning and 80% would get it wrong.
In India, voting age is 18, drinking age is 25, driving licenses are issued after 18, credits cards are not issued below 21. Most importantly, you cannot marry until you are 18. So whats the hurry in lowering the age of consensual sex at such immature age?
Some of our legal eagles say that since anyway girls are being married off before 18 and that girls and boys in rural areas are sexually active before 18, we cannot criminalize their actions - so change the law. By this rule, why then restrict our kids to vote or drink or marry before 18?
The reason we do so is because we believe that our kids are not educated enough to do these activities with maturity. But this rule changes when it comes to having sex. Unacceptable.
In India, Sex is a four lettered word. Talking about sex is a taboo. Osho once said that he wrote one book on Sex and 398 other books on spiritualism. But in India, people referred to him as a Sex Guru all his life. That is all that stayed in their mind. I agree with him.
While we want to legalize consensual sex at 16, sex education is either officially disallowed or unofficially neglected in 100% of our schools and colleges. Our censors do not allow our film makers to show explicit sexual scenes in even A rated movies. I have personally done research on sex education while launching sex education service on mobile phones. Research shows that 100% of 16 year olds all over the world do not even know how their bodies work at that age, leave alone the bodies of opposite sex. Look at the chaos consensual sex has done in first world countries. I have seen several 16 year old pregnant girls in the US. I am sure they had consensual sex as per US laws. So who suffers because of this liberal law? It is our innocent children. If you ask a 40 year old, how he/she felt at having sex at 16, they would surely say that it would have not mattered if they had waited for a few more years. At an age when kids should be focusing building a solid foundation for their future without any distractions; we are making laws to prevent them from doing so. When adults in our country behave irresponsibly against well-meaning and responsible laws, how do we expect 16 year olds to behave responsibly with a reckless law like this on their side?
Look at the state of education in India - a legal right of every child in this country. A majority of our schools perform poorly in training our kids to live a life with passion, values and integrity. Millions of our kids are out of school and only 4% reach college. These should be statistics of a third world country, not a developed country. We do not respect our children's right to education, and wash off our hands by passing a RTE bill. But we are eager to protect their sexual rights. In a country where our kids have to fight for their basic rights of food, health, education and gender equality, sex is the least important activity they need to learn at 16. For an underdeveloped and morally bankrupt educational system like India's, the latter the legal age of consensual sex, the better it is for our children. So I am not really sure what chappartod revolution we plan to achieve by passing such a pointless, senseless and regressive law?
Leave the rights of our children - we live in a country where our politicians do not want to firmly fight against non-consensual sex. They must first learn to do so, before being so liberal about consensual sex.
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