In 2003 when India Today commissioned the first-ever survey of sexual attitudes of women between the ages of 19 and 50, it set off a firestorm of protests. While researchers were roughed up by brothers and husbands of those who were being interviewed, many readers apparently wanted to do the same to us-everyone, it seemed, had a secret life which they didn't want out in the open.

PICTURE SPEAK

Our earlier covers on sex surveys

But a lot has changed in two years. There is less hypocrisy about sex, at least in the media. Sure, some of it is tantalisingly close to titillation-whether it is the coverage of mms clips or pornographic CDs. But there has been a seismic shift in kissing norms and intimate displays even in the most conservative of all media in India: cinema. It probably emerges from what one social scientist in the following pages has called a cultural foreign-direct investment. As India Today's new sex report, this time of unmarried women in the age-group 18-30 across 11 cities, shows, it is a globalisation of the mind and body and though it has not necessarily kept pace with the openness of the market economy, the gap is lessening. What is refreshing is that these young urban women are challenging sexual conventions, not in a way as to send tremors down the spines of parents but in a typically Indian way of resolving conflicts.

The new survey indicates that young single women are going places their sisters would not have thought of even a decade ago. One in every four unmarried urban Indian women seems to have had sex, a high proportion given the tendency to understate such intimate data. More than that, it is the demands they are making in their relationships which are significant: over half the respondents think they have a right to as much pleasure as men while a quarter of them say they will end a relationship if their partner is unfaithful to them. Comparisons with the unmarried segment of women in our 2003 survey indicate a new assertion among them.

India Today also commissioned a supplementary survey of unmarried men between 18 and 30 years to see if they were in tune with the changing woman. The data from that front is somewhat less encouraging. The men who were interviewed were a tad befuddled by this emerging new woman, demanding from her old notions of purity but also acknowledging her right to equal pleasure. It is not an unfamiliar feeling for men-it is called performance anxiety-but never have they been asked to deliver so substantially on the emotional front.

Clearly, as our mass media suggests, it is an exciting time to be a young person. The survey confirms it. So, please don't shoot the messenger. Read the message instead.

Index