Do you agree with the Indian law making 16 the legal age of consent for sex?

Age for consent for sex was 16 for decades in India. It was pushed ...

The age of consent should not be made 18. Whether teenagers are ready or not to have sex, whether they are educated about it in India, is an entirely different topic. Setting the age high will have adverse consequences. The police will have more reasons to harass young couples, two 16 year olds' who consensually have sex will essentially be raping each other, and parents (especially of girls) who disapprove of their daughters' boyfriends will file cases against boys for statutory rape. The hypocrisy of the government can be seen when you realize that they don't want a 17 year old to consensually have sex, but a man who rapes his wife is protected by the exemption in rape laws. They can always keep an 'age buffer' to make sure that adults do not sexually exploit teenagers, instead of having a single dividing line for the age of consent. If we want to deal with sex ed, peer pressure, etc, we need to do it as a separate matter. Criminalizing teenagers is not going to help.

The underlying question behind this law is do we consider 16 year olds mature enough to make sensible decisions about sex. There are a lot things they should know about - safe sex, the risk of sexually transmitted diseases, the consequences of unintended teenage pregnancies, the changes a body goes through after sex etc. There is no sex-ed in India. Some of those fancy schools might have them, but 99% of the schools give this issue a wide berth. I studied in a city school with students of diverse backgrounds. We had the words sex mentioned only in the context of biology. Sex in India is a taboo topic. Parents do not give 'birds and bees' talks. If a news channel debates on this issue, channels are switched. If a magazine releases a survey on sex, the edition is kept under under a few other books. Condom is a 'shush' word. Terms like LGBT are not spoken out aloud. The only people who talk about sex seem to be teenagers, with each other, based on what they have read on the internet, those surveys or pure speculation. The government seems to think that 16 year olds are capable of these decisions. Yet 16-18 year olds accused of rape are not tried under the full law and given the shelter of the juvenile law. I find this illogical. I have no problem with a lower age of consent. But I do question whether it is applicable, at the present, in India. I don't think it is.

It so happens that they've raised the age of consent back to 18. Last time I checked before this current debate (maybe a couple of years back), the age was 16. Then maybe they changed it to 18 at some point. With the nation protesting for law enforcement and women safety since the Delhi incident, the government decided to give the people some false hope by showing them that they're doing SOMETHING. And the Indian population, being the highly informed group of people it is, got a sense of relief that steps are being taken. But then they realized they don't want their teenager children to have sex and along with certain religious groups and others, they protested against this too. Just because this time it was on national TV that people above 16 could legally have sex. Coming to the point raised in the question now. I believe that as a nation moving forward, it is probably a good idea for the age of consent to be 16. No matter what people would like to believe, but with the amount of resources available today, even 10-12 year old's know all about sex. Add to that the fact that by the age of 16, everyone has gone through puberty and it is only natural for a person to have sexual desires. There's no point keeping higher age limits just because of "culture and tradition". Nevertheless, seeing that the bar was lowered in response to a rape incident, I feel this could be one of the stupidest thinking processes in the world. First, rape usually doesn't have anything to do with age. Especially when it is a 16 year old or an 18 year old. As far as I can tell, it is not common practice among rapists to confirm the age of the person before they begin their sexual assault. Second, all reducing the age of consent does is help a small number of rapists by giving them an excuse of claiming that it was consensual sex and not rape. Which means that many rape cases for people aged 16-18 would become invalid. Isn't that what the government actually wants? To show the people that their actions led to an immediate reduction in the number of rape cases! Smart move. But flipping it back to 16? Either the government realized that they totally screwed up the timing for an otherwise perfectly valid move, or they really are a bunch of confused idiots running the country. I think the latter is much more believable. People who want to have consensual sex will do it irrespective of their age, be 16 or 60. And any incident where one of the partners was forced into the act, even if they happen to be married, is rape. It shouldn't be any more complex than that. As far as the government and it's responses and actions are considered, I have complete faith in the government of India to totally screw up every single time in such matters.

The only reason why State should interfere in the sex life of it's subjects is to ensure that those who can not defend themselves are not exploited. For example children. The key consideration is at what age people are physically and mentally mature to control their own sex life ? 16 seems to be a good age for most of the societies especially the urban areas. But when UPA government makes a decision we have to be careful. This government has not track record of passing any laws that are good for people or society but good only for their vote-banks. So I might agree to the idea of lowering the age but not for the reasons that government is claiming. Secondly, we also need to look at the real draft.

This is a skewed rule to put in place, at the age of 16 a teenager is most prone to sexual pressure of any kind with the curiosity about this physical act being the highest. Kids these days are catching up on their puberty much faster than the last generation, in this case preaching absistance is being looked upon as a futile attempt There are chances where they can be lured into having sex and later the "consensual" term may be used to confuse and elongate cases where a complaint gets registered