Maharashtra Home Minister R.R. Patil has been long possessed by a bad idea. He believes that social and family harmony is under threat from one quarter above all — dance bars. In 2005, he led a campaign to close these establishments, alleging that they were hubs of prostitution and crime, and that the state of Maharashtra was willing to forgo the excise revenue it got from them, for the sake of public morality. The state declared a ban, first through an ordinance and then by amending the Mumbai Police Act. Raids and arrests followed, closing down the bars, pushing the thousands of women who worked there into even more straitened circumstances, leaving them fewer ways of making a living. The Bombay High Court declared the ban unconstitutional in 2006, for violating the right to equality, given that elite versions of the same entertainment carried on unpoliced in hotels.
The Supreme Court upheld the high court’s judgment in 2013, again underscoring the discrimination between classes of dance bar, but also asking how a citizen’s right to practise any occupation could be curtailed simply because a woman happened to be dancing rather than waiting a table. The Maharashtra government is not so easily discouraged, though. It has moved another amendment to the Mumbai Police Act, now declaring all dance performances illegal, including in clubs or hotels. It has tried to reconcile kinks in the law, instead of seeing the broader directive laid down by the Supreme Court, to regulate these workplaces better. If the state is so concerned about crime and prostitution, it should concentrate its efforts on greater protections for the women, and better crime control.
