I am the Chairman of the Council of Sex Education and Parenthood International, and the President of the Indian Andropause Society.

What is the subject matter of your presentation?
The subject matter of my talk today will be on the sexual behavior and sexual problems and concerns of the aging Indian population. The message that I would like people to take home is that, contrary to the expectations of popular belief, elderly persons are active sexually, and they would like to lead an active sexual life. But they are concerned for the public and what the family will think. I have documented that by interviewing 2071 people for a period of 15 years, from 1992 to 2005. The reason why I chose the sexuality of the aging population is simple. In India, due to our advancement in medical facilities, and technological advancement, the life expectancy of the average Indian person has gone up by leaps and bounds. In the year 1950, the life expectancy of a male is 40, and that of a female is 38. In 2003, the life expectancy of a male has gone up to 63, and a woman to 65, and it is expected to touch 81 and 83 by the year 2015. That means a large chunk of the population will be 50 and 60 plus in the coming years, and unless we address these elderly people’s concerns, and health care planning has been done for these people, we won’t be doing justice as health care professionals.

Closing Statements…
Basically, I would like to stress two things. The main problem, in India at least, is that people are in a transitory phase, because we progressed from a totally conservative society, thanks to the advent of India being ruled by the British. Now we are being exposed to the electronic media, and we are bombarded with different messages from different sources to satellite channels. And that is causing a lot of concern to the local population here. And we are neither here nor there, we are trying to understand the behavioral changes happening in the advanced societies – at the same time, we would like to follow that, but we have been held back by our conservative thinking. And unless that deep conflict is resolved, I don’t think we’ll really make progress to handle the health care needs of the population. My solution is to promote quality sexual health education. I deliberately use the words sexual health – the moment you use the three-letter word, S-E-X, in India, people are up in arms thinking that we are trying to teach people how they should perform in the bedroom. When I use the words sexual health, I am promoting a positive aspect of health, not concentrating only on the narrow aspect of sexuality.