Manas Chakravarty: Memo on dance bars

WATCHWORD

I write with reference to the decision of the Hon'ble Dy Chief Minister and Home Minister of the State of Maharashtra, Shri R R Patil, hereinafter referred to as DCM & HM, to close down the dance bars in Mumbai.

Hon'ble DCM &HM have stated that the dance bars are corrupting the moral fibre of our youth and our culture.

Hon'ble DCM &HM have also proposed the formation of a committee headed by an additional chief secretary (ACS)-level official to study and prepare norms for bars in Mumbai.

With a view to enabling the committee to prepare an in-depth report, this correspondent has conducted an inquiry into the matter, and the results, together with solutions, are encapsulated in this memo.

The problem

At the outset, let me dismiss the preposterous suggestion that the dance bars have been closed because the politicians and the police want to drive the business underground in order to get a larger cut of the booty.

I have filed that under malicious slander. Moving on to the business at hand, the most important issues have been identified. These are the following:

1) the moral corruption of our youth

2) the loss of revenue to the state on account of closure of the dance bars

3) the presence of a large number of foreign bar dancers, including East European, Nepalese and Bangladeshi citizens and the relative absence of local women

4) inequality in the bar dancing trade, with undernourished and weaker women earning less than fairer, more well-built ones

5) the proliferation of unaccounted money at the dance bars, with most of the transactions being done in cash, and

6) the question of rehabilitation of the bar dancers after the closure of the bars.

Possible solutions

The approach of this paper has been to explore all possible options to keep dance bars open, with adequate safeguards against moral contamination, in view of the revenue they bring to the exchequer.

One radical solution would be to follow the Hon'ble Dy CM of our neighbouring state of Karnataka, who has announced a ban on the sale of liquor at dance bars in Bangalore.

Unfortunately, however, surveys show that coffee dance bars, although socially and culturally desirable, may have harmful side-effects caused by the excessive intake of caffeine.

This researcher believes that the problem can be solved by adhering to a holistic 3-D approach. The three Ds referred to are the Dress code, proper Distance, and Desi women.

A formal dress code formulated expressly for dance bars should require the girls to be dressed decently in full-sleeved full-length dresses""wrists and ankles must be covered.

Wearing the burqa could be an option. The distance between the dancers and their patrons must be at least six inches at all times""this provision must be rigorously enforced by the bar management.

And thirdly, all employees at the dance bar must be desis. Bangladeshis and East European dancers must be banned forthwith.

In order to ensure that Mumbai girls get their fair share of employment at these establishments, a bar-girls-of-the-soil policy, akin to the sons-of-the-soil policy, must be implemented, with 33.3 per cent reservation for local women.

To take care of the problem of undernourished bar dancers, we could also have reservations for scheduled castes and tribes and the economically weaker sections.

The way to counter the black money problem would be to insist that all patrons show their PAN cards before gaining entry to the bars. Also, instead of showering bar dancers with currency notes, admirers must now shower them with cheques. Only crossed cheques will be allowed. All transactions will be VATable.

Rehabilitation

In case the committee feels that even these restrictions are not enough and the dance bars need to remain closed, the best way to rehabilitate the dancers would be to offer them government jobs.

What kind of jobs should they do? They could dance, but this time they would do so not for the public, but for the benefit of politicians and government servants.

As everyone knows, the question of corrupting them doesn't arise. The only problem, of course, is that it is very likely that the politicians will corrupt the morals of the bar dancers.

 manas@business-standard.com