Dhoble. Till a month ago, it would have been an unremarkable name. Now, it’s a word that every pub-goer in Mumbai jumps to. The little known assistant commissioner of police has suddenly become infamous.
The two acts that contributed most to his infamy were a raid on Masala Curry restaurant in Oshiwara and the alleged raid on Cafe Zoe in Lower Parel. Both are upmarket establishments that were raided under flimsy pretexts. In one case, Dhoble thought the women at the restaurant were prostitutes, because they had free entry to the restaurant, while the men had to pay an entry fee. In the second case, it was an issue of ‘overcrowding’. Apparently some archaic law says that only 166 persons are allowed in an establishment of 1,000 sq feet.
These are now laws that everyone in the city who reads a newspaper or watches TV would be aware of. Everyone’s also woken up to the faintly ridiculous fact that you need a permit to drink alcohol in Mumbai. All this has brought to people’s notice the fact that our politicians are even more useless than is commonly assumed.
The reason we have legislators is so they can keep our laws updated and in tune with the times. Otherwise, there would be no need for them at all — the Constitution already exists, and we certainly have no dearth of existing laws.
In fact, our problem is we have too many laws. It is therefore, rather ironic that we have so little justice. There are laws to regulate every aspect of our lives from birth to marriage to death. Each of these laws becomes a stick for some babu to beat people with. Of course, they generally let go if they are given a few rupees. That’s what happens with the law against hawkers, for example. Most of Mumbai still buys its vegetables from these roadside vendors. Most people still have their chai and their vada pav from roadside stalls. We still buy ice cream from the man with the cart who stands by the roadside. And we see these people run for their lives when the municipal van comes calling, or we see them quietly hand over free goodies or cash to the “moral” policemen who saunter up.
It makes us corrupt as a nation. We are rotten to the core because we live with these instances of corruption in our daily lives. It is something we take as normal. Of course the policeman will take hafta; of course the hafta will be shared up the chain; of course the municipality people will take bribes to do what they are supposed to, and bigger bribes to do what they are not.
No one really expects any justice. That is a thing for the movies and the books and high sounding speeches by corrupt politicians who we know to be corrupt. “I’ll drag you to court” is a threat like few others in India. People have a mortal fear of it, because our courts have a reputation for being like the Hotel California: you can never leave. Once you get into the legal loop, you might easily spend the next 20 years fighting a case. A major reason for this is that the courts are overburdened beyond belief. A judge of the Andhra Pradesh High Court, Justice V.V. Rao, had noted in an address in 2010 that it would take roughly 320 years to clear all 31 million cases that were pending at the time. But then, if even something as minor as smoking a cigarette in a taxi or having a drink at a pub can lead to a court case, obviously the courts will be overburdened. Choking the courts with unnecessary cases is the “social service” that policemen like Dhoble contribute to. Nor is it necessary that the charges they bring against citizens are true. Dhoble himself has been sued for `2 crore for tarnishing the reputation of two of the women, both housewives, he picked up from Masala Curry restaurant for alleged prostitution. Those women have means and support, so they could fight back. Otherwise, it is common for common people to be found innocent after spending years in jail. Their lives are generally damaged beyond repair by then. And who can return the lost years?
It is a depressing morass. One would imagine that if our politicians had any sense of responsibility at all, they would do something about it. Unfortu-nately, there is no evidence of that. Instead, there are repeated examples of corruption and the politics of convenience in order to grab money and power at any cost. The public reaction, therefore, must not be limited to a small fry like Dhoble. It should be against his superiors, and their political masters, who have failed to do the jobs that justify their positions.