A V Rajwade: Legislating virtuous behaviour

WORLD MONEY

Is it justified when courts carry backlogs of cases decades, many of them pertaining to unenforceable laws?

The recent closure of a hotel/disco in Chennai reminded me of the closure of dance bars in Mumbai. For several years, I would see a queue of rickshaws and taxis in front of a restaurant near my house at around 5.30 in the morning as I went for my morning walk. I sometimes saw young girls/women boarding the rickshaws and taxis and being whisked away. The realisation that this was one of Mumbai's dance bars and that the women were going home after finishing their duties and, presumably, resting after their arduous labour, struck me only when the government of Maharashtra closed down the dance bars: I no longer see the queue of waiting rickshaws and taxis. Clearly, along with the barwalas and the dozens of waiters and other attendants, the rickshaw and taxi drivers have also lost a huge amount of regular business.

It seems the ire of R R Patil, the main driver of the ban in the ruling coalition, was roused when he heard of a young boy killing his mother because she refused money to him for visiting the dance bars. If so, while one fully sympathises with the righteous indignation the incident sparked in Patil's heart, the question is whether banning an activity is the solution to the problem of some tragic cases resulting therefrom? Should we, for instance, ban motor vehicles because some innocent pedestrians are fatally injured in accidents?

Soon after independence, in our idealism, we took two steps. We banned import of gold because such idle investment cannot be afforded by a poor, resource-scarce economy like India. What was the result? Gold was being smuggled into the country on an ever larger scale. Not only did the unproductive investment continue and increase, it created powerful gangsters, particularly in Mumbai, who later extended their reach to the real estate market, the film industry, and other rackets such as like prostitution and extortion. They were also behind the bomb blasts in Mumbai in 1993, in which hundreds of innocent lives were lost. The gangsters would never have been anywhere near as powerful as they became, but for the decision to ban gold imports "" it took us 40 years to correct our folly. In between, in another attempt to legislate virtue, that epitome of self-righteousness, Morarji Desai, brought the gold control order, which led to the suicides of many goldsmiths.

The story of prohibiting the consumption of alcohol is no different. Luckily, most states realised the foolishness of depriving themselves of huge revenues only to see them going into the pockets of bootleggers. Only the Mahatma's Gujarat persists in it "" the porosity of prohibition in Gujarat is there to see even for a casual visitor. When I used to visit Ahmedabad to teach at IIMA, bootleggers could be seen loitering in front of the IIMA gates offering any brand the consumer wanted. Perhaps they still do.

The most pernicious long-term effect on society of the ban on gold imports and prohibition was the corruption of the police force. And once they become used to easy money "" such habits die hard "" no wonder that today police ask bribes even for allowing relatives to take away dead bodies from morgues!

Even internationally, the story is not too different. The ban on drugs has created a huge illegal empire of drug smugglers, distributors, money launderers and the like. Its turnover is estimated at $500 billion "" and, by definition, since anything banned becomes costly, it has led to a crime wave as addicts do anything to get the money and buy their daily fix. Only the Netherlands and Switzerland seem to have realised the folly of the banning of all drugs and crime rates in those countries have fallen.

But to come back to the folly of legislating virtuous behaviour, the recent proposal to pass a law that will force children to look after their parents in their old age, seems to take the cake "" as if children would love their parents merely because a law says that they must! And, all this in a country where courts are carrying backlogs of cases for years and years, many of them pertaining to unenforceable laws.

True, dance bars and alcohol or drugs abuse have ruined several families. But banning them also has huge costs. Isn't it time we stop banning victimless crime like the discos in Chennai, cricket betting and matka, the dance bars, courting couples on Mumbai's beaches, pornography and the consumption of at least some drugs? More so when, as Sivanandan, the Police Commissioner, Thane, recently wrote, focussing on such tasks prevents the police force from effectively performing their primary duties like prevention and detection of serious crime, maintenance of law and order and so on.

Email: avrco@vsnl.com