One more up for Foot in Mouth Award
- Hueiyen Lanpao Editorial :: June 30, 2014 -

From Samajwadi Party supremo and former Defence Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav's classic "Boys commit mistakes, will they be hanged for rape?" comment of opposing to stricter anti-rape laws to that of "If we send industrialists to jail, we would be discouraging investment," of Salman Khurshid, former Minister of External Affairs Minister in the Congress-led UPA Government, who made this ridiculous remarks while trying to justify the Government's inaction in the infamous 2G scam, the penchant of Indian politicians to wag their tongues so loosely to court controversies is well-known.

If we have anything like the 'Foot in Mouth Award' presented by the Plain English Campaign in United Kingdom for 'a baffling comment by a public figure', the list of Indian politicians who are often caught with their foot in their mouth would be so long that we would run out of award soon as we might have to give them out so frequently.

Joining the league of Indian politicians who are entitled to become the proud recipients of such dubious honour for 'wagging up' controversies by their loose tongues is the newly-appointed Union Minister of Health Dr Harsh Vardhan, who had also courted controversy for saying condoms break and morality is better to prevent HIV/AIDS.

In his latest 'vision document' for school education, the Minister, who is surprisingly an MBBS, has proposed banning of sex education in schools in a country which is not only the second most populous in the world but also the home of some 2.47 million people infected/affected by HIV with the predominant mode of transmission of the virus being sexual route.

Of course, as in the case of other politicians with loose tongues, in the face of severe criticism, Dr Harsh Vardhan has come up with a denial, saying that he had never proposed a ban on sex education and the views he expressed were in response to the UPA's decision in 2007 to introduce the 'Adolescence Education Programme' in school which was opposed by various Chief Ministers.

'Crudity and graphic representation of culturally objectionable symbols as manifested in the UPA's so-called sex education programme cannot be called sex education... Sex education is necessary, but without vulgarisation," the Minister has said in his own defense.

Here, all that we would to point out that is that since 2007, a lot of water has flowed down the Ganges or Jamuna (whichever, the Union Health Minister may like to choose in accordance to his Hindutva ideologies).

But he seems to have been caught in a generational problem with no idea about the changes that are taking place in the sexual habits and practices of young people across the country today.

With increasing exposure to satellite television and internet where hardcore pornography are easily, absence of credible sex education right from an early age has left many of our youngsters at the mercy of the producers of pornography.

On the other hand, with most conservative parents refusing to talk about sex and even learned lawmakers like Dr Harsh Vardhan shying away from including sex education in schools, where would our youngsters go to learn about the birds and bees?

In this age, banning sex education in the name of promoting 'Indian cultural values' and 'morality' is equivalent to promoting ignorance about sex, and ignorance is not always the bliss.