Growing pains at 16

So we are all set to lower the age of consent from 18 to 16. I like the phrase “age of consent”. It gives the impression that at this magic age, people would need to seek your consent for significant matters. It makes you feel important.
Logically, it should be the age when you are mature enough to make certain decisions, to think on your own, to take on the world as an adult. Your consent matters because you are no longer a child, you are ready to be a responsible citizen. And just as you gain the right to give or deny your permission in the larger world, you also lose the comfort of being mollycoddled and overprotected.
Curiously though, the age of consent seems to apply solely to consent to sex. Your consent in other matters is still irrelevant. As if you are old enough for sex but not for most other adult activities. You are not old enough to drive a car, for example. Or to vote. Or to smoke. Or to drink. In fact, your maturity vis-à-vis booze seems to vary dramatically according to the state you are in. (Well, yes, if you are in a state of inebriation you may be denied another drink, whatever your age. But for the less colourful, drinking age varies according to the particular state government’s whims.) In Delhi and Mumbai, for example, you can’t drink spirits till you are 25 years old. (Wait, you could drink beer, I believe, from age 21.) But if you step across the border of Maharashtra to Goa, or from Delhi to Uttar Pradesh, you could quickly gain the maturity to drink from age 18. Most other states in India have stuck to the traditional drinking age of 21.
But generally 18 is the magic moment when you are expected to come of age. And that is unlikely to change even if the age of consent is lowered to 16. By law, you would be mature enough to have sex but certainly not mature enough to marry. So having had sex legally at 16, if you or your partner get pregnant, you would not have the option of marriage. This could get a bit sticky for you and your partner, not to mention for the baby in the womb. Since unmarried motherhood is not easily accepted in our country this would further endanger the health and lives of the child mother and her unborn child in a land struggling to stop underage motherhood.
Because finally this is about childhood, and how we define it. We are a signatory to the International Convention of the Rights of the Child, which defines a child as anyone under 18. Nothing dramatic happens at the age of 18, you may say, and fixing that age of reason is somewhat arbitrary. True. But law in a democracy is supposed to be about equality and consistency, not about whims and fancies and votebank politics. And once we decide who is a child we better not lose sight of her while pursuing our several concerns. As the child’s capabilities grow, the state’s parental protection of him or her lessens — and balancing the two is of crucial importance.
Coming of age is unfortunately also tied to religion and custom. Which often allow prejudices to remain in the secular fabric of civil society and its laws. Like how we have, for generations, failed to stop child marriage. The Akha Teej is coming up and as usual Rajasthan will be buzzing with child weddings as most of civil society looks away, stuttering nervously about the Child Marriage Restraint Act, 1929, and prohibition of Child Marriage Act, 2006. Our institutionalised escapism has no problem reconciling Section 375 of the Indian Penal Code that makes sex with under-15s a crime with the fact that child marriages are still valid. Besides, while it is still not legal for men to marry till they are 21, it is legal for Muslim women to marry at 15. So much for gender equality. So much for our bleats about equal treatment of boys and girls in childhood.
Of course our definition of childhood is rather absurd. For us, a child is adult enough at 14 to work but not adult enough to have a drink till 25. And if you are at 16 responsible enough to know what you are doing in the matter of sex, then why are you not ready to be held accountable for your criminal acts? Lowering the age limit of juvenile delinquency from 18 to 16 would be the next logical step, consistent with the lowering of the age of consent.
In short, this change in law will reflect today’s truncated childhood. It will mirror our unfortunate society, its loss of innocence and its mindless acts. We have no space for childhood. Either urgent daily needs or seductive marketing hype have edged childhood out pretty successfully.
Let’s face it — less privileged children have always had a shorter childhood. They are forced to face the big bad world at a very early age, helping with housework, working in the fields, going out to work instead of going to school, bringing up younger siblings so that their mothers can go out to earn a wage. They can’t afford the luxury of a full-term childhood or the innocence that comes with it.
Now even privileged children, those who have traditionally been mollycoddled till well into their twenties, are losing their childhood pretty early. Take a quick look at the many television shows with toddlers and pre-teens in skimpy garb and make-up gyrating suggestively to Bollywood songs, or cracking silly, adult-like jokes. Look at their parents weep in joy when these kids get points, see the parents weep in despair when they do badly. There is very little scope for childhood in this competitive, let’s-make-our-kids-into-mini-adults world of ours. And with marketing gimmicks that make adult garments and accessories for little kids acceptable and in demand, including high-heels for toddlers, we seem to be revelling in a world of mini adults who quietly turn into real adults while we are not looking. So why will children not be expected to behave like adults at 16?
By lowering the age of consent for sex our nation may be accepting the way we are today. Most countries around the world have 16 or lower as the age of consent. But most progressive countries also have a system that protects childhood and the many demands that a lower age of consent may trigger. Hopefully we will not fail ourselves and our children on those.

The writer is editor of The Little Magazine. She can be contacted at: sen@littlemag.com [2]