With time, society evolves. Social norms change, sometimes for the “better” and at other times for the “worse”. Thus, over the centuries, social divisions based on caste and creed have become blurred. In other words, the very average person has begun to accept the truth, very gradually though, that despite differences in the colour of one's skin or religious faith or historically-determined social positions, the soul of a human being is colourless. There is an overriding and compulsive equality of the atma which reduces billionaires to zero and catapults the poor and the deprived to the moon.
Rising sensationalism
Creeping changes in social norms mean that corruption has come to be more widely accepted in, say, Indian society than was the case 50 years ago. At the grassroots level, this means that the person who goes to a Government department to get his car registration renewed, or to get a replacement for his ration card which he has misplaced, accepts that he has to pay something extra as a matter of course to get the job done. No eyebrows are raised, no questions are asked. The bribe is paid silently and accepted matter-of-factly, and a job gets done.
Similarly, the subject of sex has undergone a change in social perception; what was once “under the carpet” as it were has now become more easily acceptable as a fact of daily life. The best indicator of this change is the media, which has developed both a healthy and voyeuristic interest in the subject. The media should, of course, be blamed for blowing things up beyond reasonable proportions for economic gain. But then, it is the growing appetite of “society” for such news that has emboldened the media to, at times, cross reasonable limits.
Raising the bar
It is with this last aspect of social change that we are concerned here because of its links with a major policy decision taken last week, which has been described as being regressive. The subject is the legal age bar for consensual sex, which the Union Cabinet has raised to 18 from 16 on the ground that the “age of consent” provision was inconsistent with the existing provisions in the Indian Penal Code and the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, under both of which the legal age bar is 18.
The latest version of the Protection of Children Against Sexual Offences Bill 2011 seeks to drop the “age of consent” clause which originally accepted an age-range from 16 to 18 years, the associated inference being that consensual sexual activity involving a person aged 16 would not be held to be transgressing the law. Clearly, given that there has been a progressive liberalisation of social mores worldwide relating to sexual issues, the “inconsistency” pointed out by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Human Resources Development vis-a-vis other pieces of legislation is a technicality which should have been tackled in some other way than by raising the age bar for consensual sexual activity.
As a New Delhi additional sessions judge said last week while delivering a ruling on a case involving two youths in love with each other, “the legal system cannot be used to punish youngsters in love who are on the verge of attaining majority, and this court cannot ruin their lives by taking a hyper-technical view, especially so when the age-gap between these youngsters is within acceptable limits and does not reflect an exploitative coercive situation”.