The Hindu Business Line : Mumbai minus the dance bars

While many in Mumbai agree that the dance bars are a bad influence on youngsters, the majority's sympathies are with the bar girls who have been done in — Vivek Bendre.

MUMBAI could well be the Los Angeles of India. Arguably, there can be no apple to apple comparison. LA's spas have health as the leitmotif; Mumbai's massage parlours tend to focus more on the erotic. Again, one could say that for Moulin Rouge and Chicago Hollywood drew on the Broadway; just as for Chandni Bar Bollywood did on the plethora of `Dance Bars'.

Mumbai uncorked, most admit, is champagne material. Better infrastructure will soon mean easier movement and a faster pace of growth. The vision of a less congested Mumbai flickers before us, no matter whether the city refashions itself after Shanghai, Singapore or Sydney. Master-plans that had for decades adorned shelves have been dusted out are being pored over. All kinds of sea-linkages are being discussed and honest-to-god tenders are getting invited from global companies.

But the makeover plans for the megapolis seems to have a hit a roadblock the last couple of weeks in the shape of a question on morality. Bitten by the morality bug, the State government is on a crusade to ensure that Generation Next is not led astray by dancing girls in over a thousand dance bars across the State. If this is a tactic to divert attention from Mumbai Makeover, the dance bar imbroglio seems to be working admirably well.

For those who have no notion of what a Mumbai dance bar is, it is a place where a bunch of girls, wearing flashy dresses, swing to the high octane sound of popular Hindi movie songs, usually behind glass partitions. The patrons, all male, shower currency notes on them and get drunk simultaneously. At some of these joints, the dancers get into physical contact with the customers.

The cynics have reason to gripe as not many seem interested any more in the Rs 3,000-crore, 22.5-km, trans-harbour bridge linking Mumbai island with the mainland at Nhava. The ideal ratio of carving up the mill land in the city between public space and private builders remains a faint memory. Fixing a floor price for cotton and the failure of the mango crop are no longer deemed critical issues as the dance floor frenzy sweeps everything that comes in its way.

The furore over the danger posed by some 650 dance bars in the State, but outside Mumbai, began on March 30, when the Deputy Chief Minister, Mr R. R. Patil, said: "'These bars are corrupting the moral fibre of our youth and culture."' They would be shut, but not those in the metro, he said, only to make a flip-flop a month later. Only last week it was decided that the nearly 700 dance bars in Mumbai too would have to go.

And the matter is threatening, if not to bring down the Government, at least to create a massive fall in its popularity. The general sentiment is such that an opinion poll at this juncture could find the Government's popularity level at a new low.

And, suddenly, there is no one in Mumbai who does not have a view on the issue. There are those who side with the government decision and feel that the moral fabric of society is giving way at the seams. (This is happening in a city that turns a blind eye on open solicitation in the classified columns of newspapers under the label of massage.)

However, the multitude are with the `poor' bar girls who have been done in. Surely not all these girls have bank balances running into crores of rupees or move around in the swankiest cars. But, certainly, the poorest of them earns Rs 500 a day, with the collection in direct correlation to enterprise.

Though not executing the Can-Can, the average take-home for these dancers is anywhere between Rs 2,000 and Rs 10,000 a day depending on their agility and attractiveness. And there are those who earn as much as Rs 50,000 a day in Mumbai, money thrown at them being split in the 70:30 ratio with the dance bar owner. One is told that banks are not averse to advancing these girls housing loans.

Sure, Mumbaikars have reason to feel aggrieved that the establishment is giving a short shrift to the dance bar employees — some 75,000 bar girls and almost three lakh male workers, mostly waiters and bouncers. The latest one heard is that a bar dancers' representative body has drawn the attention of the National Human Rights Commission to the developments.

Tailpiece

The Maharashtra Government, in a significant climb-down, has indicated that the bar girls could get employed as waitresses in regular bars. Naturally, the moral police would be ready to blow the whistle if these waitresses are caught shaking a leg or swinging a hip while taking orders from their customers.

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