(Dr. Shashi Tharoor, a two-time MP from Thiruvananthapuram and the former Union Minister of State for External Affairs and Human Resource Development, is the author of 14 books, including, most recently, Pax Indica: India and the World of the 21st Century.)Let me say I actually rather like our new Health Minister, Dr. Harsh Vardhan. He is a pleasant, friendly, rather avuncular individual. I imagine that as a medical practitioner he must have had a gentle and reassuring bedside manner; certainly no one who has spent two minutes with him would ever accuse him of wanting to harm a fly.
And yet his recent remarks, first on discouraging the use of condoms to prevent AIDS and suggesting that fidelity was the preferred route, and then the blunt statement on his website that sex education in schools should be banned, risk doing great harm, not to flies but to human beings.
In his "vision document" for Delhi, Dr Harsh Vardhan declared unambiguously: "So-called 'sex education' to be banned. Value Education will be integrated with course content. Yoga should be made compulsory." I am all in favour of values education, and even of yoga, but I am at a loss to understand how the banning of sex education - and the related promotion of ignorance about sex - can do any good for our society.
Perhaps it is a generational problem: the Health Minister is an old-fashioned moralist with little idea about the recent changes in the sexual habits and practices of today's young Indians. A generation of parents has convinced itself that brushing problems under the carpet will ensure they don't exist. Don't teach kids sex education, and they won't practice sex. Wrong: they'll do it, but they'll do it unaware of the dangers, the means of protection, or the consequences of unprotected sex. The result could be sexually transmitted diseases, unwanted pregnancies resulting in clandestine abortions, and even HIV/AIDS. Ignorance kills.
I remember my former boss, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, telling me about a disconcerting experience he had had with an African President (whom I shan't name, since he is still in office.). The President, an octogenarian Christian, interrupted Mr Annan when he was talking about condom use in the battle against AIDS. "Mr Annan," the President said disapprovingly, "you are the Secretary-General of the United Nations. I don't want to associate you with condoms." And he changed the subject, leaving Kofi Annan nonplussed.
Many senior Indians share the attitude of this distinguished statesman: sex and condoms are not subjects that important people in positions of political authority talk about. They are necessary evils, no doubt, but not to be discussed in polite company.
But if you don't discuss them - don't acknowledge how important they are and how essential it is for your government, and your population, to be aware about them - you shroud yourself, and your society, in darkness. And the public health consequences can be horrendous.
This is why the promotion of ignorance is irresponsible, not virtuous. Fidelity may indeed be a better AIDS prevention measure than condoms, as our Health Minister believes, but saying so doesn't make every man or woman faithfully monogamous. Public health requires us to take into account the way people actually behave, not the way we wish they would behave. Since AIDS kills 2 million people a year around the world, we shouldn't be taking chances on its spreading in India.
That doesn't mean we should caricature the Health Minister's views. "Any experienced NGO activist knows that condoms sometimes break while being used. That is why government campaigns in India, whether through the National Aids Control Organisation or the state governments, should focus on safe sex as a holistic concept which includes highlighting the role of fidelity to single partners," Dr Harsh Vardhan has said in explaining his initial remarks. If he can ensure that the government continues to promote sexual awareness and not just abstinence, and the easy availability of condoms in addition to lectures on morality, Indians will be safer.
"For the past two decades," Dr Harsh Vardhan added in his explanatory remarks, "I have been stressing the need for safe sex using a combination of condoms and discipline which is in line with the Abstinence-Be Faithful-Condom (ABC) line of UNAIDS that has yielded great success in Uganda and forms part of the anti-AIDS campaigns of several countries. As the health minister," he declared, "I find it justified to include this simple message in the communication strategy of the government's anti-AIDS programmes. Condoms promise safe sex, but the safest sex is through faithfulness to one's partner. Prevention is always better than cure."
These are unexceptionable remarks, but morality should not become a mask for promoting ignorance. I count on Dr Harsh Vardhan to act in full accordance with the letter and spirit of his explanation. Educate our kids about sex; make condoms easily and widely available (and affordable); provide no-questions-asked counselling for those with sex-related problems; and only then rely on the preaching of virtue. Otherwise you would be undermining our chance of preventing the spread of disease -- and worse.
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