:: Kishwar Desai

Killing sex drive with Krishi Darshan

Kishwar Desai

July.18 : This is, of course, the silly season. An election has been won by one party and lost by another. Therefore both sides are finding every excuse to behave in a completely foolish fashion. It is impossible to pick up the paper on any given day and not find another outrageous statement by a United Progressive Alliance (UPA) minister — or discover that the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) has not tripped over itself, once again. If it is euphoria which is causing the giddiness at one end, at the other it is the frivolity which accompanies failure — a false sense of a new dawn, orchestrated with the wailing of violins.

The recent statements by Ghulam Nabi Azad, the honourable minister for health and family planning, on family planning are hilarious. Or at least they would be if they were not so seriously meant. To the most casual observer, there is a sense of deja vu. Are we going to encounter Ramadoss Mark II? A golden opportunity was squandered the last time by Dr Anbumani Ramadoss who spent most of his time upbraiding wicked filmstars for corrupting others by smoking on screen. He was also more obsessed with the directorship of AIIMS (All-India Institute of Medical Sciences) than giving us a better health system. Or even better doctors. If the last time the government was hobbled (or so we were told ) by the need to accommodate the motley crew of undesirables hauled together to keep it in power — this time round things were meant to be better. The government was more stable and so did not need to carry all the dead weight along.

However, now we are being given an (un)common minimum programme not by "outsiders" but by a Congress Party determined to reward its loyalists. Obviously, all loyalists cannot be supremely talented — an unfortunate fact which has entirely escaped those who cobbled together the Cabinet. Therefore, we have the anomaly of Mr Azad who, living up to his name, is not only azad from mobile phones (he says he hates "the things", according to one interview) but also azad from any understanding of why people have sex. Mr Azad is sufficiently coy enough to hint that children are created out of boredom, and that if people had more sources of entertainment (ie, not sex but Vividh Bharati) they would not be lured into bed. Really, Mr Azad? It might surprise him that many people indulge in a great deal of sex even when the TV in their bedroom (this may shock him, so I hesitate to put this in a family newspaper) is blaring loud and clear. The only difference, Mr Azad, is that they are better informed and better educated and so they have heard of things like condoms. Most importantly, due to access to better jobs and income, they also enjoy a lower infant mortality and maternal mortality rate. They have fewer children, Mr Azad, not because they have more sources of entertainment — movies, restaurants, European holidays… and whatever else it is that ministers with small families entertain themselves with… but because the few children they have are more likely to survive.

It is this complete disconnect with reality that makes me fear for this government. Most of the ministers lead unnatural lives, moving from an airconditioned car into an airconditioned office (except during electioneering) — and are cordoned off from the aam aadmi and aurat by layers of comfort zones. They should all be sent for compulsory living in the villages so that they can learn to empathise.

Men and women who are emaciated with hunger and see their children suffer from malnutrition, know that very few of them will live beyond their 20s. These men and women have large families, Mr Azad, because their children are their only hope. They don’t have large families because they have too much sex — they have many children because then they can actually dream of a life where at least one of their children outlives them. At least one among them may become not an aam or a khaas aadmi or aurat, Mr Azad, — but just an aadmi or aurat. Just grow up, that’s all. If you lived with that fear, Mr Azad, if you did not reap the fruits of loyalty so well, you would understand. But why should you? You will never go hungry — or not have access to good hospitals or good education.

And then, of course, it is touching how much faith Mr Azad has in the non-libidinous pull of television. I fear he has had a pure diet of Doordarshan Lok Sabha TV which, I admit, might put you off sex for many janams. But if he were to watch MTV or even jhatak-matak Tamil films with bare flesh jiggling, I wonder if he could recommend it to those whose carnal desires he hopes to curb? Perhaps, he quaintly thinks that people in the villages (those unknown quantities who vote for his party) watch Krishi Darshan avidly and if these programmes were given extended coverage, villagers and other small-town sex fiends could watch these till the cows came home… and forget their daily dose of procreatively driven activities.

On the other hand, if Mr Azad has ever watched a saas-bahu serial, I challenge him to define the overarching manifest reason why anyone in their right minds would forgo an enjoyable romp in bed for the pleasure of watching various over-made-up fierce-looking matrons prancing around in unnaturally crisp silk sarees in mortal combat with other members of the same species over some worthless male. In fact, I cannot think of a better reason to indulge in a bit of nooky, than just that. So Mr Azad may find, to his horror, that his well-meant gesture of providing TV sets to an over-populated country has not reduced the population but has had quite the opposite effect. The busts have led to a boom, if you know what I mean.

In the old days, we could have recommended a good dose of sex education for Mr Azad. But now that he is a minister in what should be a key ministry, he is a little beyond that — he is not even aware of the worldwide medical acceptance that sex is actually good for your health, or the worry that producing children at an older age may lead to health problems.

The tragedy is that once again the health sector, which should be given dynamic and urgent leadership, is being used to park someone who needs to be accommodated — not for his overwhelming talent, but for keeping the Congress’s own (un)common minimum programme alive.

The writer can be contacted at kishwardesai@yahoo.com