"I am uneducated and won't get any other job. We depend on this and five
stomachs depend on it. Give us some other job," Mala, a mother of five, said on
Sunday (July 24).
The move by the Maharashtra government to ban 1,300 bars statewide will throw
75,000 unskilled and otherwise unemployable women like Mala out of work.
The girls-they are forced out of the business as they cross 30 years of
age-take home 70 percent of the tips and the bar owners 30 percent.
A further 75,000 waiters, barmen, cooks and cleaners are expected to lose their
jobs after the ban.
But the dancers and their backers say the bars are the only way the women, many
of them single mothers, can earn a living. The ban will force thousands into
prostitution in the city's slums, where many of their mothers actually started
out, they argue.
"If the government gives us employment it is OK. Does the government want us to
get into bad ways? I just can't understand the ways of the government," said
Manik Pal, a bartender thrown out of job.
Officials from related liquor industry said they would try legal redress
against the closure of dance bars.
"We plan to move the courts as there is no other way out. We have talked to our
counsel. We pay so much taxes and help the government but now there is no other
way," Balkrishna Shetty, Vice President, Maharashtra Liquor Association, said.
The dance bars themselves are hardly X-rated. The women wear saris, showing no
more than their midriffs. The average music video or Bollywood "item number" -
raunchy song and dance routines-shows more flesh.
Customers garland the girls with cash, or throw money - the favourite way is to
hold a wad of notes between thumb and finger and shower them over the dancer.
In the up market bars, a rich customer spends thousands of dollars on a
favoured dancer in one night, showering 100 or 500-rupee notes ($2.30 USD -
$11.50 USD).
