Petty laws create major problems

How many persons were facing trial for gambling in 1994? The NCRB doesn8217;t give figures, but they must be at least 2 million since every gambling raid8217; results in several arrests. Imagine the social costs of prosecuting two million people, 99 percent of them men, who arecarpenters, electricians, peons and vegetable-sellers. legal costs impoverish them and their being jailed for three months deprives their families of their sole bread-winner.

Eighty percent of accused gamblers are convicted, though the conviction rate is only 30 percent for rape. In India, the more minor a crime, the more certain the punishment. Social costs aside, by enforcing the anti-gambling law, the Indian state burdens our already overworked judiciary, currently clogged with 25 million cases. The 7.95 lakh gambling prosecutions account for a not insubstantial 3.2 per cent of the backlog. Dropping these mindless pro-secutions would lighten the judiciary8217;s burden immensely.

So would the dropping of prohibition-related prosecutions, which numbered 19.3 lakh or nearly two million in 1995. That amounts to around 9 per cent of our judiciary8217;s backlog, which can be wiped out by a simple administrative decision. If the State could drop 23,862 prosecutions under TADA The Terrorist and Disruptive ActivitiesAct, why can8217;t it let go of liquor-law violators, most of whom are petty offenders anyway?

The futility of prohibition has been acknowledged by enquiry commissions and by India8217;s opinion-making circles. But Andhra Pradesh and Haryana, which repealed prohibition, continue to prosecute offenders for violating a law they themselves acknowledged as unworkable. In 1995, Tamil Nadu was pursuing 67,000 pr-ohibition-related court cases and dry Gu-jarat was chasing 1.16 lakh. Naturally, our justice system has broken down so badly that Newsweek recently reported that it would take the Supreme Court 324 years to clear its backlog even without new cases being brought to it.

The problems facing our legal system are self-created. They stem from the Indian State8217;s inability to see that people violate laws that interfere with activities they view as pleasurable. In this sense, the Indian state is a milder version of orthodox Islamic societies which seek to regulate private behaviour. The wiser western nations leavetheir citizens alone. They recognize that drinking, gambling, prostitution and pornography cannot be stamped out. In India, however, some 24,000 female prostitutes were being prosecuted in 1994. Plus there were 94,000 cases under India8217;s absurd NDPS the National Drugs and Ps-ychtropic Substances Act which prescribes 10 years in jail for carrying 20 grams of charas, the same punishment as that for kidnapping and maiming a minor for begging8217;. If all these prosecutions 8212; except the serious onesacirc;euro;ldquo; were dropped, the Indian judiciary8217;s workload would be considerably lower.

In fact, the Indian State should distinguish between minor and major offences. Cheating a person of Rs 200 is not as serious as cheating people of crores. Thefts should also be categorised. In 1994, some 3.03 persons were arrested for theft and the number of theft prosecutions was around 9.3 lakh. Anecdotal evidence suggests that petty thefts would form the bulk of these cases. The ones where the stolen amount was less than, say, Rs 2,000could be easily dropped. If prosecutions for terrorism in Punjab can be dropped, why can8217;t a man stealing an old cycle be spared?