Flaws in our grand laws

The year is still new, and we are full of good intentions. This week we learnt that the government’s sporadic efforts — mostly weak and often mindless — to change anti-dowry laws for better implementation may include laying down rules on how much you can spend on weddings. The Planning Commission’s Working Group on Women’s Agency and Empowerment has recommended an income-linked ceiling on marriage expenditure, which would include gifts as well as celebratory feasts. In short, if you try to spend beyond your means on your daughter or son’s wedding, you’d better be ready for the dowry inspector.

Now this could of course be a good thing. It could provide the feeble-minded with demonstrable armour that protects them from being squeezed dry by peer pressure and social showiness while celebrating the nuptials of their offspring. In a society that is increasingly celebrating absurd ostentation, such rules may indeed help the weak-kneed in protecting their families, especially daughters.
People save up for years for their daughters’ marriage, channelling away funds that should have gone into the girls’ education, health and other capability-building resources that girls have as much right to as their brothers. In a logical world, a cap on how much you are allowed to spend for that one occasion may help in reducing dowry demands and the economic neglect of girl children, leading to better education and healthcare for girls, less childhood mortality of girls, more access to economic freedom for women, better maternal health, more women’s empowerment and the elimination of female foeticide.
Except that it is unlikely to happen. Coercive laws don’t always work for deep-set social evils. We need sensitive, intelligent, multi-dimensional, unflagging awareness-building exercises on various fronts to change the notions of social honour and gender inequality. Besides, it is always tricky to allow the government too much say in our personal lives. Especially in a democracy that secretly aspires to be a police state.
Look around you. There are no anti-dowry advertising campaigns, no campaigns against extravagant, ostentatious weddings. No naming and shaming of known offenders. No ridicule of the mind-boggling ostentation of the rich. No public sneering over the incongruous standards of flamboyant celebrations set by television serials and popular films. We look on in awe. We aspire to get there. Then we are startled by yet another bullying law creeping up to kill that dream. And we sigh at the added expense of paying off the cops under one more head.
Do we need more specially tailored laws? If we could get our lugubrious justice system to work better and use the relevant, prevalent laws maybe we wouldn’t need to add to the pile. Perhaps we actually need to trim our law books, instead of making them bulkier.
There are too many useless laws in India. Some exist only as tools to help the cops get rich. A 1998 commission identified 1,300 outdated laws, of which around 200 were repealed. That still leaves about 1,100 useless laws crowding the statute books.
Like the laws dating back to the 19th century which allow you to drink alcohol only if you have a permit. Hold it right there, madam, do not reach for that gin and tonic. Do you have a permit for it? What about you, uncle? Have you not seen the form that spiritedly begins with “Sharabi ka naam; sharaabi ke pita ka naam; sharaabi ka pataa… (Name of the drunk; name of the drunk’s father; address of the drunk…)”? Did I hear a guffaw? Don’t you scoff, young man. How old are you? Oh, 22, are you? Put that glass down at once. And go hide in a corner — the law forbids anyone under 25 from drinking.
Oh no, don’t threaten to book me under the Lunacy Act, smart alec. In fact, I could book you under it, the way you are going into convulsions. Epileptics are included in the Lunacy Act. No kidding.
Oh yes, we have clear, legal ways to deal with irritating problems. Take the homeless. We could just book them under the Vagrancy Act. Besides, begging is an offence — so if you are both homeless and a beggar, which is not unlikely, you could be booked under both the Vagrancy Act and the Prevention of Begging Act. And if you are a leprosy patient, god forbid, then we could book you under the Lepers
Act too.
No, don’t put on that Gandhi topi and raise Anna-like slogans. Just wearing the khadi Gandhi cap itself could be an offence under the Prevention of Seditious Meetings Act. Sure, a lot of these laws are old and decrepit, but they exist, and you can’t oppose the rule of law, can you? They sit there as tools of police extortion and, occasionally, of government oppression.
Like the ancient sedition laws under which dissenting citizens — including praiseworthy social workers like Dr Binayak Sen — are jailed. Section 124(A) of the Indian Penal Code criminalises any “disaffection” towards the government by words, either spoken or written, or by signs or by visible representations. You must have affection for the sarkar. If you don’t, and show it, you may rot in jail for life. Doesn’t exactly encourage constructive criticism and free speech, does it?
Besides, our flourishing electronic media, the Internet and social networking are all still ruled by the Indian Telegraph Act of the 19th century. Doordarshan frequently invokes the Act to get better deals in a privatised economy. Sure, television and the Internet did not exist in the 1880s when the law was made, but hey, we are the land of jugaad. We can adapt to new situations. We make great open vans from tractors and bullock carts, remember?
By the way, did you know that the courier service you so diligently use is not quite legal? The Indian Post Office Act specifies that only the sarkari post can legally deliver letters.
There are hundreds of ancient and ridiculous laws, many of which are still in frequent use. Like the Police Act of 1861 which has been threatened with extensive reforms several times, but has never been reformed. Neither the police nor the government would want that — it’s so much easier to treat citizens like subjects as this Raj era law does, and not be accountable. Of course, there is the small matter of the cap here as well. The Act demands that a cop take off his cap or helmet when faced with a member of a royal family. So let’s doff our cap to our grand laws, and move on.

The writer is editor of The Little Magazine. She can be contacted at: sen@littlemag.com