So India in general has an extremely progressive acceptability for sex education. We have ads on national TV promoting condoms (by the govt. With Bollywood jingles) as well as female contraceptives.
You can pretty much walk into any govt hospital (which are not much to look at) and get free contraceptives and contraception operative procedures.
We have a huge govt funded initiative around sanitary napkins, which is also considered a marketing case study in general [1]. Remember this was done through schools.
The contraception debate in the US (including abortion) seems weird.
India does have a significant proportion of female foeticide for cultural reasons, which is why it is banned in India to do prenatal sex determination. This has entered the cultural psyche to such a degree, that my friends who have conceived in the USA, will explicitly tell their doctors to not tell them about the gender (yes. An Indian citizen can be arrested upon entry to India if it can be proved you paid for sex determination outside of India).
However the impact of contraception innovation in India reaches far beyond it's shores. We are the largest supplier of generics and contraceptives to several third world countries including Africa.
"India has more married women with an unmet need for family planning than any other country, and social stigma and a lack of privacy in stores has kept condom use to less than 6 percent."
Progressive acceptability maybe - but it appears Indians have very poor compliance, at least with condoms. Here's some data from the UN in 2015. India does OK compared to the rest of the world in regards to contraception. Most contraception use in India is by permanent sterilization - which is likely BTL (bilateral tubal ligation).
Young, educated people in Indian urban centers are essentially a demographic that doesn't need to be targeted because they're almost always sensible enough. Take away any of those three conditions, and the need for proper education among that group becomes harder -- as does the difficulty of reaching, convincing, and actually implementing any sustainable "culture of contraceptive use" among them.
It's what you'd expect where adults, especially lower- or lower-middle-class adult women, will almost never talk about sex, resorting to grown-up versions of "wee-wee", or oblique "that time of the month"-ish circumlocutions, if they do at all.
India also has a pretty grim history of adult men being forced to undergo (often botched) sterilization during the infamous Emergency declaration in around 1977, with a significant number of casualties. This kind of history obviously muddies the waters (as if the almost-institutional cultural reluctance to engage with these matters wasn't enough).
I must say, though, that there are more TV ads than ever, and even the occasional billboard (which residents' unions will often try to shutter on the grounds of "public morality") for condoms or contraceptive pills. AFAIK (and it's no wonder why) the government doesn't advertise morning-after pills at all, but Indian Big Pharma does (and, again, I doubt how many of the people who'd actually benefit from the ads see them or act upon the information). Unlike the situation in the US, here the driver is some kind of ill-defined "decency" rather than the threat of swift retaliation from an enraged petty deity: not that it makes much of a difference.
The TV based ads are almost entirely targeted towards the rural demographic. I'm not saying it's enough ...And whatever limitation exists is a consequence of lack of funds rather than intent.
The condom issue has been well known for decades. Since the 60s, contraceptive health in India has been entirely focused on women for this same reason .. as a way to give them the choice instead of asking men.
The compulsory sterilization was an extremely tiny slice of history..For which the political party in question is being punished TO THIS DAY.
You are right about the colloquialism around talking about sex. Actually it's funnier than "wee wee". There is a cultural bias against women being "impure" at a certain time of the month - and then being disallowed in the family kitchen. The marketing campaign around this was a version of "don't touch the pickle".
Point being - this is not unusual. But the Family Planning bodies in India are now masters or crafting the marketing and the messaging to bring the conversation out in the open.
They did this very successfully with contraception in villages by organizing women committees..And for sanitary napkins in schools.
Well, India is different I think because it's a matter of national importance. I guess the Indian government really has no other option besides forcing the idea of contraceptives onto the population. This is not a bad thing, but I just want to clarify that overpopulation is a very strong motivator, and is something that few countries in the world have to deal with.
Few Western countries. Population is a huge problem in much of Asia. We should all praise the success of Bangladesh in addressing the problem so quickly, they really dodged a bullet there.
There are two India's if you look only from rate of population growth. The four southern states have a similar accrual rates that of the west, and rate of increase in the "northern" states.
To quote the article referenced below:
"..Nine Indian states (Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, West Bengal, Delhi, Karnataka and Maharashtra) had fertility rates less than the replacement level of 2.1.
Kerala and Tamil Nadu, at 1.7, had lower fertility levels than Norway and the Netherlands, at 1.9 and 1.8 respectively."
So India in general has an extremely progressive acceptability for sex education. We have ads on national TV promoting condoms (by the govt. With Bollywood jingles) as well as female contraceptives.
You can pretty much walk into any govt hospital (which are not much to look at) and get free contraceptives and contraception operative procedures.
We have a huge govt funded initiative around sanitary napkins, which is also considered a marketing case study in general [1]. Remember this was done through schools.
The contraception debate in the US (including abortion) seems weird.
India does have a significant proportion of female foeticide for cultural reasons, which is why it is banned in India to do prenatal sex determination. This has entered the cultural psyche to such a degree, that my friends who have conceived in the USA, will explicitly tell their doctors to not tell them about the gender (yes. An Indian citizen can be arrested upon entry to India if it can be proved you paid for sex determination outside of India).
However the impact of contraception innovation in India reaches far beyond it's shores. We are the largest supplier of generics and contraceptives to several third world countries including Africa.
[1] https://scroll.in/article/802833/how-the-advertising-industr...