So ran a headline in the Indian Express on the occasion of World Sexual Health Day. The paper cited Dr Santosh Kumar, head of the urology department at PGI.

While conversation around the subject is a good idea, given how anything around sex runs the risk of being ignored, there are a couple of major grouses we have with the headline.

One, India to be said capital seems to check only for the metric that the largest number of cases of said issue are in India. However, it is rather obvious, that largest number of cases of anything are likely to be in India or China given the populations. Check for the highest number of sneezes by nation and one can be certain that India or China will be top of the list. Will you, Indian Express, in that case, declare India or China the “sneeze capital” of the world? This is maths done wrong. Blatantly wrong. Even adjusting for the sorry state of journalism, it is a ridiculous and unacceptable overreach.

Two, what’s the word ‘impotence’ doing there? What’s wrong with erection issues? Let’s look at it etymologically. The ‘potence’ in ‘impotence’ goes to power. Sexual health is not about physical power. We think the word impotence sits in this headline because of it being the long-standing translation of ‘namardi’ seen in wall painted advertisements of traditional sex clinics. In itself the word perpetuates the stigma associated with the space and we urge the Indian Express to change its vocabulary when it comes to writing about the category.