Legislating morality extremely difficult: Aney on dance bars

Shreehari Aney, who resigned as Maharashtra Advocate General after a furore over his separate Marathwada remarks, on Wednesday cautioned the government on “legislating morality” on the dance bars issue. “As far as these dance bars are concerned, the problem of women working should be considered, along with men working, as a right to livelihood,” he said.

“In an industry where work is of a hazardous nature, laws are required to ensure that these hazards are mitigated,” Aney said in an interview.

“In dance bars where women perform before a predominantly male audience, there are built-in occupational hazards. But merely because there are hazards, you can’t stop the industry. The correct way would be to ensure that those hazards are minimised,” he said. “The lawmaking process is getting confused in a moral dimension. To legislate morality is an extremely difficult thing,” Aney said.

On the other hand, to legislate protection (of women) is easy, he added.

“If framing of laws is done for the purpose of security of women at the workplace and to stop such anti-social activities as prostitution, it would not be a difficult law to frame,” Aney said.