DNA Edit: Need Govt, not a Nanny

A wise man had once said that in a nanny state where liberty is held hostage, “government intervention is never the solution; it is always part of the problem”.

The I&B ministry’s ‘advisory’ to television channels to restrict broadcast of condom advertisements between 6 am and 10 pm, since they “could be indecent/inappropriate for viewing by children”, is one such intervention.

It’s both alarming and hilarious: Alarming because playing the guardian is fraught with consequences for the public who will have to live with an overarching force dictating the dos and don’ts in their personal lives. Hilarious for the fact that the government fails to see the blatant commodification of women in mainstream cinema, but finds condom ads inappropriate.

Today, in view of rising incidence of crime against children, concerned parents are teaching their two-year-old wards the crucial difference between a good and a bad touch. Sex education in schools, however censored it might be, still purports to inform children of the hazards of unprotected sex.

It’s a child’s natural curiosity to ask how he/she came into the world. For parents, best suited to address this fact of life, the answer is graded and nuanced. In these times when children are increasingly exposed to all kinds of misleading information about sex and sexuality, a titillating ad, faithful to its purpose of encouraging the use of contraceptives, shouldn’t have alarmed the government, which has far more daunting tasks to fulfil. The I&B ministry, like similar occasions in the past, has overstepped its limits.

Children today know what it actually meant when two flowers kissed on the screen in the 80s. The government should leave the parenting exercise to parents, and focus energy to rid the society of child predators whose numbers seem to be rising by the day.