Morality check in Mumbai

The Maharashtra ban on dance bars, on the grounds that they corrupt the youth, deprives 75,000-odd girls and lakhs of other workers of their livelihoods.

DIONNE BUNSHA in Mumbai

SHWETA has started dreading phone calls from home since the bar outside Mumbai where she worked shut down. The Maharashtra government's recent decision to ban dance bars has put this 27-year-old dancer out of work. She does not know what to say when her mother, calling from their village in Andhra Pradesh, asks her to send money to pay her son's school fees. "The bar where I worked has been shut for two weeks and I don't have any money. I am borrowing money for my food," Shweta said.

Shweta, who lost her husband in a car accident, provides for her family - her mother, her four-year-old son, and her younger brother and sister. "I have to pay the college fees for my brother and sister. I don't know how I shall manage. By closing the bars, the government is destroying our families. We beg them not to," she said.

It was poverty that forced Shweta into the profession. "I had to do this because our family situation was very bad. We had nothing to eat for three days. We were on the verge of suicide," she said. "My life is spoiled, but I am working so that my child, my brother and my sister can study. They must have a good life."

Shweta is not alone in her present plight. About 75,000 young women who made a living by dancing in bars and another 400,000 bar workers will be left without jobs once the State enforces the ban on dance bars.

On March 30, Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister R.R. Patil, who is also the Home Minister, declared that dance bars outside Mumbai would be closed because these were "corrupting rural youth" and "damaging the culture of the State". He was responding to a question in the Assembly by Peasants and Workers Party (PWP) legislator Vivek Patil, who demanded that all bars in Raigad district should be shut down. "Many of these bars do not have entertainment licences and are flouting liquor licence rules," Patil said. The government, he said, did not have enough policemen to enforce the rules outside Mumbai.

The Deputy Chief Minister initially said that the girls would be "rehabilitated", but changed tack later, saying that since 75 per cent of the bar girls were from other States and many actually came from Bangladesh, only the Maharashtrian girls would be rehabilitated. What the `rehabilitation' meant was not made clear.

Later, on April 12, he announced that bars in Mumbai would be banned too.

Dance bars are a peculiar Mumbai feature. They have women dressed in chania cholis dancing to blaring music, while clients throw wads of notes at them. By an unspoken code, no customer touches the girls while they are dancing. Many bars arrange for cars to drop the dancers home after work.

Members of the Shetty community and a few north Indians own most of the bars. Their clients vary, depending on the location. Among those who patronise them are politicians, policemen, businessmen, corporate executives and stockbrokers. Some bars even have a `VIP section', a separate dance floor for `elite' clients who do not want to be recognised. Legend has it that the largest amount ever blown up in a dance bar was by Abdul Karim Telgi, the prime accused in the stamp paper scam, now behind bars. He is said to have spent Rs. 90 lakhs in a single night on a dance girl in Mumbai. Some police officers and politicians are known to be partners or financiers of dance bars. The government did not at first ban dance bars in Mumbai because politicians were closely linked to the business.

"What are these politicians talking about corrupting the youth?" asks Manjit Singh Sethi, president of Fight for Rights Bar Owners Association. "Ninety per cent of our clients are corrupt officials. These are the people who have black money. We are not interested in the younger crowd who don't have spending power."

The outspoken Sethi has challenged the Deputy Chief Minister, alleging that Patil's men have been demanding Rs. 13 crores from the bar owners. "We have been negotiating with them for the past four months," Sethi said.

After this public accusation was broadcast on television, Patil vehemently denied the charge and asked Sethi to provide proof. However, Vilas Satam, vice-president of the Nationalist Congress Party's Kurla branch in Mumbai who was allegedly negotiating on Patil's behalf, was expelled from the party. Moreover, it was shortly after Sethi's allegation that the government announced a clampdown on Mumbai's dance bars as well.

"You can't do business in this country without bribing," Sethi said. Bar owners claim that dance bars are a big source of revenue for the government: each dance bar in Mumbai pays Rs. 15 lakhs a year to the government in excise, licences, sales tax, municipal taxes, and so on. They also claim that each bar coughs up illegal payments (hafta) up to Rs.100,000 every month to various politicians and policemen to stay in business. Dance bars outside Mumbai sometimes pay as much as Rs. 400,000 in hafta every month, because many of them are pick-up joints and do not have proper licences.

The government says it will lose only Rs. 8 crores in revenue, but bar owners say that tax collections from Maharashtra's 1,250 dance bars add up to nearly Rs. 3,000 crores. One bar worker asked, "If the bars are illegal, why does the government collect so many taxes from them?"

Only a few bars were actually shut down two weeks after the ban was announced. The government had not served them any notice to close. "What is the point of announcing something when they can't implement it? Let them take action against those who are not following the law, but why ban all bars?" said Sethi.

Twenty-year-old Aliya Khan dances at a bar in Panvel. "If they shut down the bars, we shall be forced into the wrong business. The dance bars save us from a fate that is much worse," she said. "Is the government going to give us work? People talk so rudely to us, they spit at us, throw us out of building societies if they know we are bar girls. Some girls even have college degrees but who is going to employ us?"

Many believe that bar girls are in it for easy money. A lot of people, such as shopkeepers and rickshaw drivers, force them to pay extra. But most of the girls have no savings and have families that depend on their incomes. And then there are people who try to extract money from them at every level, like, for instance, the security guard of a building society who refuses to unlock the gate unless the girl who lives there pays him. Earnings vary from Rs. 30 to Rs. 2,000 a day, depending on the location of the bar, on the time of the year (festivals are good for business), and on how often a girl's customer (who spends only on her) visits the bar. Sometimes, women in dance bars located in posh areas earn around Rs. 20,000 a day, but these instances are few. A few girls get chances to go abroad for shows, to places like Dubai.

Varsha Kale, president of the Bar Girls' Union, said,"Only a few earn really well. Most girls have joined the trade because of some difficulties. Either her father died or her husband has left her. They are the sole earners for their families and yet, they are not treated with respect."

Aliya, who has been working in a bar for eight months, supports two brothers, two sisters, her mother and two grandmothers. "We do this out of helplessness. Why don't people ever put themselves in our shoes? What would they do if they had families so poor?" she said. "I can't live at home because my younger sisters and brothers and the neighbours shouldn't know I am in this line. So, I share a room with other bar girls."

There are people who will lose not only jobs but also homes if the bars close down. People who work as waiters, stewards, cleaners, cooks, guards and drivers for the bars. Manjunath Shetty Parakal, a steward in a bar in Panvel, said: "We live and sleep in the bar. We get three meals a day. I have been moving from one friend's home to another since the bar shut down. How long can this go on?" Going back home is not an option: "I have to get a sister married in May. With what face will I go back to the village? I have taken loans from some friends. Since the bar closed, I am ashamed to face them."

Shiva Shetty, a bar manager from Kalyan, who worked his way up from being a helper in the bar, said, "When I came to Mumbai in 1991, I looked for work everywhere - factories, shops, the film industry. Finally, I found work in a dance bar and I could look after my sick mother and two little sisters in the village. The dance bars have saved many people from disaster." The day after the ban on dance bars was announced, the bank from where he had taken a personal loan took away his television set and gold chain. "I had only one more instalment to pay," he said.

Bar workers and bar girls' unions have started an indefinite protest in Mumbai's Azad Maidan. All day and night, they camp in the playground, braving the heat and dust. Passers-by stop to ogle at them, but the government has not taken any notice.

Patil's ban on dance bars to protect the morality of the youth may soon push out of work dance girls to trades that are more exploitative. For, how long can Shweta keep dreading her mother's phone call?