Yet, they have ready access to sexualized content on television or the Internet. The search volume index for the word ‘porn’ on Google has doubled in India between 2010 and 2012,20 one in five mobile users in India wants adult content on their 3G-enabled phones, and there is an increased consumption of affordable and accessible pornography among men and women such that seven Indian cities rank among the top ten in the world for online porn traffic.21 Most of these Indians watch porn secretly to quench their sexual curiosity. All this chaos and confusion inevitably lead to sexual frustration.
Violence, especially of a sexual nature, is often an extreme expression of this frustration and weakness of Indian men. Look at the role models they have—in contemporary culture, sadly, it is the aggressive and obsessive Bollywood hero, refusing to take no for an answer, who influences the values of these young people. Moreover, if large numbers of India’s youth remain unemployed, and labour trends continue to show young people withdrawing from the workforce, violence, including sexual violence, will continue to thrive.
While the perpetuators of sexual violence clearly use unacceptable outlets for their frustrations, the sex workers in Sonagachi tolerate it in return for money. Sex is one of the oldest professions of the world, but in India, because of inequalities and inherent social hierarchies, it is sexual violence, including rape, that is rampant on the streets and even more so in the brothels.
Poverty breeds overpopulation and overpopulation again breeds poverty and ignorance. The poor have a lack of awareness about family planning, and also need more hands to earn or at least help out at home. So they often give birth to more babies than they have the resources for, making the whole situation worse. The other three main reasons for our population growth, besides poverty, are the high fertility rate of women, the decline in the mortality rate, and the lack of other sources of entertainment such as television (or even electricity) among India’s poor.
We have, in the past, tried various contraceptive measures. The intrauterine contraceptive devices in the 1960s allegedly failed, and the backlash against Sanjay Gandhi’s disastrous experiment of compulsory sterilization in the 1970s brought down the Indira Gandhi government and set back the country’s family planning efforts by decades. The mainstay of India’s family planning policy currently is to reduce women’s fertility—not solely by devices and female sterilization, but also by improving health, education and literacy. However, the baffling results of India’s National Family Health Survey 2015–16 show that the use of contraception did not correlate with the increased literacy rates in those regions.22 For example, the report showed that between 2008 and 2016, in Kerala, the state that has the highest total literacy rate, condom use plunged by 42 per cent but the usage of condoms in the same period doubled, and the use of oral pills rose four times in Bihar, which has the lowest total literacy rate in India. This is perhaps because sex education is not part of the school curriculum in India, and so literacy levels do not correspond to the awareness of the topic. In terms of education at home, Indian parents also usually avoid any conversation related to sex, including advice on the use of condoms or guidance on oral birth control pills.
It is no wonder that the report shows that over the eight years from 2008 to 2016, as India’s population surged, the use of contraceptives declined by almost 35 per cent, while abortions and the consumption of emergency pills—both having hazardous side effects—doubled. Worryingly, our men are becoming more reluctant than ever to use contraceptives—the use of condoms has declined 52 per cent, and vasectomies have fallen by 73 per cent during this period. Meanwhile, women remain largely unaware of the benefits of regular oral contraceptive pills. Even the meagre usage of oral birth control pills fell 30 per cent between 2008 and 2016, further surrendering the control of family planning to the men, who, as we know, are not keen on using condoms.23
We are yet to successfully introduce the simplest of contraceptives, female condoms, in India. During my time at the Jindal Group, I tried to do so. In partnership with Hindustan Latex Family Planning and Parenthood Trust—a public sector enterprise known for its odd and long acronym, HLFPPT, and for being the largest condom distributor in India—I designed, and got manufactured, sleek, strong condom-vending machines with our own company-manufactured steel. I had learnt that all past attempts by the government to place condom-vending machines in public had failed on account of two main reasons: one, vandalism of the earlier flimsy vending machines that were made of tin, and two, people’s reluctance to buy condoms in public. Moreover, all these condom-vending machines only sold male condoms. But what about women? Why do women need to depend on the good sense of their male partners to avoid getting pregnant? I managed to convince HLFPPT to sell female condoms in India at a heavily subsidized rate, which still turned out to be around three times the price of the male condom. Together, we placed our first few tough, steel vending machines in private corners of public spaces (including men’s and women’s toilets and near ATM machines) in New Delhi.
The consequences were striking—more female condoms than male condoms were purchased by men and women over the first three months. A subsequent anonymous survey revealed that much of that was because of the initial curiosity about what a female condom looked like,
