I have a confession to make, a rather shameful one. But, heck, how often does a nice matron like me get to learn the dos and don’ts of the birds and bees on the front page of a morning daily? Or on prime-time television? Notice I am mincing my words. Using sanitised versions. Just like everyone else in the sex education debate — the terms so pedagogically sanitised, so hermetically packaged for moral consumption! And I have a sneaking suspicion that I’m not alone. Bare it or ban it, everyone’s delighted with the Central Board of Secondary Education’s official ‘Kamasutra for Kids’.

For newswallahs, it’s the chance to turn soft porn into hard news, reproduce graphics and illustrations (edited of course; we don’t want respectable readers to be getting any adolescent ideas, now, do we?), then ask every Peeping Tom, Dick and Dirty Harry to talk about whether we should talk about sex to a generation weaned on Hollywood films. In fact, thanks to the media, the CBSE’s Adolescent Life Skills Programme is reaching beyond its intended target to provide adult sex education to the entire nation.

For politicians it offers a new consensus formula: disagree to agree. So when the Maharashtra government primly banned sex ed this week, politicians across the political spectrum made strange bedfellows — again — to support the decision, and denounce the deflowering of ‘Indian Values’. Coming from our leaders, whose exemplary conduct has always provided us with the perfect role model, this protest needs to be taken seriously. (Although I do wish their defence of vulnerable minors would include the thousands sold each year to India’s flesh bazaars).

... contd.