Invisible world of adolescents

AT first glance, most of them seem bright and happy, perhaps because their hopes are still intact. Even social discrimination and familial taboos cannot destroy the hopes of those who have not lived yet: our adolescent girls. They look up to free and powerful women around them, and think women like Kiran Bedi, Shabana Azmi and even Sonia Gandhi are wise, beautiful and sincere. They want to study, to talk to their families about their worries and hopes, their fears and dreams. But most cannot. They are, as old aunts say, but birds of passage in their father's house. They shall pick grains and fly away.

Adolescents (defined by the World Health Organisation as people between 10 and 19 years of age - WHO 1996:4), today account for about one-fifth of India's population and half of them are girls. For adolescent boys in most communities, there are several rites of initiation into manhood but, until recently, adolescence as a vital transitional period for girls was unacknowledged in India. One day a girl was a child, a kanya. Then came marriage and she was given away in kanyadanam and became a woman overnight, even though may have been only 14 or 15 years old. Motherhood followed soon and, thereafter, she was a mother for the rest of her life. And mothers, as we all know, are ageless in India. That early marriage, unwanted pregnancies, malnutrition, reproductive tract infections, even sexually transmitted diseases may haunt this large, invisible group and remain mostly unaddressed is a thought still not available to most Indians.

Despite the average age of marriage being 18, custom and other exigencies ensure that most adolescent girls in India are married off earlier. Over half the married adolescent girls are mothers or pregnant by the time they are 18. Yet talk of sex or their own bodies is taboo. If they must talk of either, it can be only with other girls of their age (and caste/class) behind closed doors. Matches, girls are told, are fixed in heaven, and parental rules are inviolable. An adolescent girl must thus accept her husband as her karma, no less, and wait for him to teach her about sex. If he will not or cannot, then she must hold her tongue and let him do what he will. In India, "fixing" a good match within the girl's caste and class takes precedence over everything else. Astrologers, uncles, aunts and grandparents are all pressed into service as are family barbers and old retainers. But almost no one pauses to initiate the girl into the facts of life or get her ready to face the major physical, emotional and social changes that she experiences.

Today, desperation to stem population growth and the threat of HIV/AIDS has forced the Government and policy-makers to explore this neglected area, of adolescent sexuality, where young girls are most vulnerable to all sorts of physical and emotional disorders. Recent data reveals that, like female literacy, marriage and fertility too are marked by sharp regional variations. In Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh, for example, more than 50 per cent of adolescent girls are married. In contrast, in Kerala and Goa, their number is less than 15 per cent. Teenage pregnancy is very high in MP and Maharashtra and there is a definite link between female illiteracy and early motherhood and neo-natal and maternal mortality almost everywhere.

While the Government is slowly coming to terms with the challenges of a growing adolescent population, some non- governmental organsiations working in the field of maternal and child health, have been propelled into addressing the problems of teenage sexuality. They have begun counselling services for unmarried and married adolescents along with confidential and free medical services. Yet, all of them confess that, given the socio-cultural constraints on sex and the extreme sensitivity of the Indian families to any discussions about reproductive health with adolescent girls, this poses enormous challenges, and must be addressed with great caution.

NGOs, however, can manage only small-scale projects that address a limited number of adolescents. The majority of our young, especially the unmarried girls, still have no access either to institutionalised information, help or services that will help them cope with the normal problems of adolescence. There is a crying need to incorporate sex education in the school curriculum which provides children with factual information not only on their nutritional needs, their changing anatomy and emotional planes; but also puts them in touch with special counselling services. Since lay workers, paramedics, teachers and specialists will be vital in the dissemination of such information and services, they will need to be taught to respond sensitively and without judgment, to these special needs.

In our frenzy to incorporate moral sciences and religious values in the school curriculum, we seem have forgotten how the young need, above everything else, to communicate. They need to talk and savour their newly awakened sexuality without worry or guilt. Why must we talk to them only of high morality and spiritual abstinence, and not about life, joy and creativity? In ancient Greece the word "idiot" denoted a common person without access to knowledge and information. By that definition, we are raising a generation of adolescents where all young women and most men will be idiots: unable to access available information, unable to choose or cope. For a country, with over 190 million adolescents, it should merit a far greater concern than what a Dharma Sansad or a Hurriyat chooses to discuss.

MRINAL PANDE

The author writes in Hindi and English and is a freelance journalist.

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