Financial Services for Sex Workers
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 4:15 PM

Academics like me have access to a "Save More Tomorrow" plan, in which we can overcome our usual present-bias in an attractive, painless manner and move our savings rate closer to what our long-run selves think is desirable. Most people are not so fortuitously situated. Commercial sex workers, who can earn substantial sums, often have a hard time saving money, for various reasons. First, they might be caught up in a high expense lifestyle, perhaps including substantial expenditures on alcohol and other drugs. Second, they might face demands (even extortionate ones) from those who recognize that sex workers might have some cash hanging about. For these and other reasons, I think that a robust policy towards prostitution generally should include access to financial counseling, along with help for alcohol and other drug abuse.

Via Tyler at Marginal Revolution, we learn of a bank that promotes savings accounts for sex workers in India. The bank even facilitates savings by sending employees around to pick up deposits. Here's the BBC story.

Vice Squad noted back in September that Hungary was providing financial planning services to sex workers.

Labels: India, prostitution

 
Limited Food Compensated By Lack of Amenities
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 7:12 PM

The E-Inn in Bangalore isn't for every traveler. The food (which might be terrific, for all I know) is subject to the constraint of being of the vegetarian persuasion, and to being both locally and organically grown. Perhaps if you are there and want to diminish your appetite for a burger or a pizza, you will have a cigarette. Stop -- no smoking on the premises. If you want to self-medicate the resulting depression, don't even think about having an alcoholic beverage -- those are off-limits, too.

The hotel is designed to be consistent with sharia law. According to this article in the Times of London (thanks to Alcohol and Drugs History Society for the pointer), the demand for sharia-compliant hotels is rising. As always, Vice Squad is happy to see 100 flowers bloom on this score, as long as those who are not interested in operating their hotel along sharia principles are free to do so.

Labels: alcohol, India, smoking

 
Valentine's Day Attempted Repression
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 4:38 PM

Looks like the annual attempt by some Hindu and Muslim groups to coerce others away from celebrating Valentine's Day hasn't had much success this year, at least in India. Police and rain played spoilers to the anti-festivity festivities.

Meanwhile, a Valentine's Day protest was scheduled for noon today in San Francisco, in opposition to higher fees for California state's medical marijuana id cards.

Two years ago in Vice Squad...

Three years ago in Vice Squad...

Labels: India, marijuana, Valentine's Day

 
Did Closing Dance Bars Increase Prostitution?
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 5:58 PM

Vice Squad has loosely been following the situation in the Indian state of Maharashtra, where authorities have been closing "dance bars," in which young women dance for tips from a male clientele. The main reason for the crackdown, it seems, is the belief that the bars are fronts for prostitution. But what happens when the bars are closed and the dancers lose their jobs? It may be that some of them then turn to prostitution to make ends meet.

Labels: dancing, India, prostitution

 
Mumbai Dancer Protest
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 4:24 PM

There has been an attempt to close "dance bars" in the Indian state of Maharashtra. (Dance bars hire girls who, well, dance, while the male clientèle tosses currency in their direction. The state government thinks that the bars are fronts for prostitution, or crime incubators more generally.) Already some 1,500 dance bars have been closed, though the 700 bars in Mumbai (Bombay) have not yet met that fate. Despite an early judicial victory, the bars remain at risk. So some 10,000 dancers joined a street protest in Mumbai (Bombay), shouting "Save Our Jobs." It has been suggested that closing the bars would lead to more prostitution, as the dancers would look to alternative sources of income.

Labels: dancing, India, policing, prostitution

 
India and John Stuart Mill
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 6:56 PM

"No person ought to be punished simply for being drunk; but a soldier or a policeman should be punished for being drunk on duty." So wrote John Stuart Mill in the fourth chapter of On Liberty. In India, they are beginning to take this to heart, following a horrific alleged rape involving a drunken police officer. It turns out that surprise inspections revealed that some 36 officers in Mumbai were drunk on duty last year. This Times of India story has more; here's an excerpt:

Lawyer Sudeep Pasbola said, "Normally you will find 50% of constabulary drunk on night duty. There are several reasons —bad living conditions, the pressure under which they are working and long duty hours. There are also emotional and social reasons. Many constables do not have quarters and their families stay in villages. For some others, they are not able to enjoy a good family life as they are on duty for as long as 12 to 15 hours daily. They resort to drinking in an attempt to drown their sorrows."

Mill, like his father, was a long-time (and high-ranking) employee at India House.

Labels: India, Mill

 
More on Indian Obscenity Policing
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 1:51 PM

The closing of dance bars in the state of Maharashtra apparently has not yet included such bars in Mumbai (Bombay), which is located in Maharashtra. But one suspects that the tolerance will not last long, as there's a new cop in town. Since January, Sanjay Aparanti, a medical doctor, has been Deputy Commissioner of Police (Enforcement) in Mumbai, and he is on a crusade: 'I have decided Mumbai must be rid of obscenity in all walks of life.' Oh dear. So far it looks as if the good doctor has taken particular aim at outdoor advertising and television broadcasting that does not meet his less-than-precise standards. What is this 'obscenity in all walks of life' that must be stamped out? 'Advertisements that show female models with scanty clothes; film promos full of vulgarity; music albums and remix videos full of vulgarity; film posters full of obscenity; some newspapers regularly carry porn material and I have served them notices too.'

Labels: dancing, India, marketing, obscenity, policing, pornography

 
India's Dancing Girls Protest Bar Closures
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 1:35 PM

Dance bars in the western Indian state of Maharashtra have been closed by the government. The claim is that the bars double as fronts for prostitution, and concerns were also expressed that young men spend too much money there. The government move is being countered with protests:

Hundreds of dancing girls and bar owners took to the streets yesterday to demonstrate against a decision to close the infamous dance bars and clubs of Maharashtra in west India. Crowds of colourfully dressed women and vociferous bar managers swamped the roads in an attempt to register their discontent with a move which they claim is discriminatory and incompatible with the state's reputation as a haven for hedonistic partying.

Speaking of vice-related protests in Maharashtra, the tea traders intend a one-day strike on Wednesday aimed at the relatively high state value-added tax on tea. Tea, of course, is a major commodity in India and Maharashtra.

Apologies for the unintended and unannounced blogging break.

Labels: dancing, India, obscenity, prostitution

 
Spreading Fellow Feeling Among Oft-Discordant Religions [Updated!]
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 11:31 PM

Ah, Valentine's Day. It has a way of bringing the world together, no? Take the case of hardline Muslims and hardline Hindus. These groups are sometimes not on good terms, to put it mildly. But this time of year they find themselves in accord, in their shared enmity towards celebrations of Valentine's Day. Here's a story on those Saudi religious police, the "Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice," and their efforts to suppress the color red in the days leading up to Valentine's Day. And here's a complementary tale from India, where the Bajrang Dal are one group supplying Hindu anti-V-day vigilantes.

In both India and Saudi Arabia, however, many folks find a way of avoiding the strictures of the virtue promoters.

This is the second year that Vice Squad has been able to note the concurrence between Hindu and Muslim activists on the inadvisability of other people's Valentine's Day celebrations.

Update, Valentine's Day: Another Hindu anti-V-day group, Shiv Sena, has taken to calling Valentine's Day "Prostitution Day."

Labels: India, Saudi Arabia, Valentine's Day

 
Illicit Alcohol Deaths
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 11:11 AM

India's recent troubles have been augmented in the past few days, alas, by poisonous bootleg alcohol. In the Bombay region, 65 people have died and many others have been sickened after consuming illicit liquor that contained a high concentration of methyl alcohol. (The potable version is ethyl alcohol, or ethanol.) The victims are poor people who apparently frequented low-priced, underground liquor sellers.

Tainted drugs are usually associated with prohibitions, but high taxes or any controls that engender a large gap in price or availability between above and below-ground varieties also can lead to risky (and even deadly) adulterations. In the Bombay case, the underground market appears to have been well-established and tolerated. Authorities have now transferred some police and tax officials for looking the other way.

Labels: alcohol, India

 
Anti-Obscenity Thugs Rampage in Kashmir
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 3:50 PM

And they have the nerve to call themselves the Democratic Liberation Party. Here's an excerpt from this article:

SRINAGAR: Activists of a separatist political party went on a rampage in this summer capital of Jammu and Kashmir Saturday, smashing furniture and property of restaurants accusing them of spreading vulgarity.

The activists said these restaurants had become centres of "obscenity and vulgarity" in Kashmir because they provided separate cabins for their clients.

Dozens of activists of the Democratic Liberation Party formed by Hashim Qureshi stormed some hotels and restaurants in the posh Regal Chowk, Gogjibagh and Rajbagh areas of Srinagar.

They smashed glass, destroyed furniture and even dragged out some restaurant owners and waiters, beating them severely. All this was done ostensibly in the name of checking obscenity and vulgarity.

I guess they had to destroy the village to liberate it. Alas, I am afraid (based on what has been happening to alcohol sellers) that Iraq is being similarly liberated.

Labels: India, obscenity

 
Televised Music Videos Targeted in India
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 7:45 PM

And no, not for being derivative and dull. It's the obscenity, don't you know.

In the past, I have danced around the position that some obscenity control over broadcast television and radio is not clearly undesirable (did that make sense?), even as I object to the large ex post fines levied on the likes of CBS and Howard Stern in the absence of a clear standard.

Labels: indecency, India, obscenity

 
India's Smoking Ban
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 11:58 PM

Maybe everything has not gone smoothly with the introduction of the workplace smoking ban in Ireland, but India's public smoking ban probably has bragging rights when it comes to implementation problems. First there was the minor matter that a "public place" was undefined. Now, Delhi's failure to implement its portion of the ban has been made official. Sounds like the problem was that no one was actually given the authority to prosecute malefactors.

Labels: India, smoking ban

 
Taj Mahal and Gambling
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 11:31 AM

If you are like me, you are probably saying, "hey, I thought that the Taj Mahal was all about gambling." Well it turns out, that in addition to the Trump Taj in Atlantic City, there's some other Taj Mahal in Agra, India. No one goes there, it seems, primarily because there is no casino nearby. But that looks like it will change, if the tourism ministry in Uttar Pradesh has its way:

The Mulayam Singh Yadav Government [Yadav is the chief minister in Uttar Pradesh] has offered several five-star hotels to open casinos, on the lines of those in Goa so that there is enough leisure activity for visitors to the Taj.

"One of the reasons people keep away from the Taj is that there is nothing to do apart from visiting the monument in Agra," says a senior minister in the Yadav government. "To make it exciting for visitors, we had two proposals -- one was to get permission to open the Taj in the night, under full moon, and to open casinos for fun and excitement."

Maybe they could combine the two and have nighttime gambling at the Taj?

I visited Agra in January and was extremely disappointed when I found out that there was no casino. Had I known about that Taj building, I might have dropped by, however, since I was in town anyway. (OK, I am kidding -- I did visit the Taj; it greatly exceeded my expectations. I anticipated that it would be a very nice building, worth taking a look at, but I was not prepared for what I did experience: being overawed by its grandeur. Given the testimonies of countless non-gambling visitors, I guess I should have had higher expectations to begin with.)

Labels: casino, gambling, India

 
Has the Smoking Ban Undermined Police Productivity in India?
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 4:31 PM

Hard to say. The police developed a clever scheme to uncover a truck carrying lots of illicit alcohol. They seized the alcohol, but somehow, the five individuals connected with the bootleg booze were able to give the slip to the scrupulous forces of law and order. What to do with the alcohol, given that it won't be needed as evidence?

Labels: alcohol, India, policing

 
India's Smoking Controls
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 4:11 PM

A ban on smoking in public places has just come into effect in India; accompanying the smoking ban is a prohibition on tobacco advertising and sponsorships and a ban on sales to individuals under 18 years of age. (What's a "public place"? That is yet to be determined in Delhi or in Pune.) The nation's largest tobacco firm has signaled its willingness to be law abiding. One hundred fifty million smokers might be harder to convince.

Labels: India, smoking ban, teens

 
Foreign Vice Developments: Moscow (gambling), India (alcohol), Malawi (prostitution)
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 2:41 PM

Three unrelated but somewhat exotic stories, at least given their locales....

(1) "Moscow has been transformed over the last two years as gambling businesses have flooded the city's streets, shops and metros, enticing passersby with chances to win or lose their money....

There are now 53 casinos in Moscow, 35,000 slot machines and 2,000 igroviye zaly, or slot machine arcades in the city..." London, similar in population to Moscow (13,945,000 in the London metropolitan area, 11.2 million in Moscow), has 29 casinos, according to the linked Moscow Times article. Moscow also now sports its first Gamblers Anonymous group.

(2) The Indian state of Gujarat has prohibited alcohol since 1960. The son of one of the state ministers has had more than 750 crates of alcohol confiscated from his house, which neighbors on his father's home. The father's portfolio in the cabinet is not one you would find everywhere: he is Minister for Religious Places and Cow Protection.

(3) The lame-duck president of Malawi has been issuing a spate of decrees as elections approach. Following a long tradition of scapegoating women for sexually transmitted diseases, he recently ordered that women out at night be arrested, as a precaution against the spread of AIDS. Four law students challenged the decree, and the High Court granted an injunction that has caused the implementation of the decree to be postponed.

Labels: alcohol, gambling, HIV, India, Russia, slot machine

 
Licensing Illegal Prostitutes
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 4:01 PM

Operating a retail trade business in India typically requires a license. The mayor of Kolkata, India wants to make sure that prostitutes are complying with this regulation. This despite the fact that prostitution is illegal. The mayor "has said he would grant trade licences to about 16,000 sex workers and their family members living in Sonagachi, one of Asia's biggest brothels in the city's north.

'I don't want to know who is into what trade or whether it's right or wrong. That the government will decide. I only know if you are trading, then you must have a licence,' [the mayor] has argued.

He said he had decided to ask sex workers to get trade licences subject to the fulfilment of some conditions.

Prostitution is considered a crime in India that can fetch an offender up to one year in prison and a fine."

Labels: India, licensing, prostitution

 
Evasion-Led Liberalisation of Tobacco Markets...
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 8:51 AM

...in, er, India. (Really, this will be my final post based on my Delhi adventure. Trust me.) Last year Philip Morris received the right to import Marlboros into India; last week, the Indonesian cigarette brand Sampoerna was granted a similar privilege. Why the liberalised import regime? Evasion, once again. This article (registration required) from the Economic Times includes the following quotation from an Indian government official: 'There is no way we can stop smuggling of cigarettes. We can at best minimise its impact by officially allowing it to come into the country. By doing so, we can have some control on this unregulated industry.' Hmmm, might that same logic apply to other illegal drugs?

For a discussion of how evasion prompts reform, diehards can see my book, The Political Economy of Rule Evasion and Policy Reform. For a pre-India-trip Vice Squad look at cigarettes in India, see here. By the way, despite the smuggling, foreign cigarettes are but a small share of the market in India. The popular, tiny, inexpensive cigarettes in India would barely be recognized as cigarettes by US smokers. I bought a package of 25 "Mangalore Ganesh Beedies" for 5 rupees in Delhi (1 dollar equals about 44 rupees), and they are by no means the cheapest cigarettes available. Yes, the package is adorned with a drawing of Ganesh, the Hindu elephant god. Oh no, a quick web search has just informed me that the US cut off imports of these hand-rolled cigarettes in the late 1990s because the manufacturers allegedly employed child labour in abject conditions. This article suggests that the children were indentured servants. Oh, the more one reads, the worse it gets: Ganesh beedies are contraband in Oklahoma!

Labels: India, tobacco

 
Some Liberalisation in Alcohol Markets in India
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 7:18 PM

OK, maybe just one more post based on my recent Indian sojourn. Imports of food and liquor pay a substantial duty in India. High class hotels have been largely exempt from these duties, however, on the grounds that they cater to foreign tourists (whose visits are essentially exports from India's perspective), and there is no need to discourage such "exports" by taxing them. But cheaper hotels and stand-alone restaurants (of which, my limited visual inspection suggests, Delhi (population some 13 million) has a paucity) have had to pay the import fees, leaving them at a competitive disadvantage compared with the Hyatts of Delhi. Last week, the Indian government extended the tariff exemption to these smaller hotels and stand-alone restaurants. But the regulations remain pretty convoluted. Among other things, the exemption only applies to up to 5% of foreign exchange sales that are paid for with international credit cards -- apparently, any system based on cash or receipts other than from international credit cards would be too subject to abuse. Further, the exemptions will only remain in place if the cost savings are passed along to customers. Just keeping track of this condition should provide employment for a hefty percentage of Delhi's 13 million people. Most of the smaller hotels and restaurants have international credit card sales that are too small for the exemption to make any noticeable difference whatsoever. The big hotels can count their room rentals towards their 5%, so the exemption is worth much more for them. [Access to the linked articles from the Economic Times (Delhi) requires a free registration.]

Delhi and Chicago share one piece of alcohol control policy: it takes ages for a new restaurant to secure a liquor license! In Delhi, new restaurants have found a way around the license requirement, by securing a "party" license and not reporting their liquor sales. Will this avoidance be the spur to reform? From the linked Times of India article: "In other words, Delhi continues to be in high spirits with scant regard to official sanction. So, why not legalise what is going on by issuing bar licences, specially when more bars translate into more revenue for officialdom?" Gee, you don't think that the licensing requirements are being circumvented in Chicago too, do you?

Labels: alcohol, Chicago, India, taxes