Friday 15 February 2013

Not so punitive fine for offences

In many petty offences in India, the laws mostly require the guilty to pay a fine of certain amount. I was travelling by train yesterday, noticed a sign put up which said "Use of explosive material in train is a crime and liable to be punished with a fine or imprisonment or both" and that is when I got the idea of writing this entry. The given fine amount was Rs. 1000. This made me laugh. A friend of mine spends nearly 500 a day on food, travel and other stuff. Even if he was to be fined, it would just be the loss of two days' pocket money. I assumed that this fine amount prescribed by the lawmakers might have been heavy on the pockets during the time this law was enacted. But it needs to be reviewed. If the fine amount is not something that takes a toll on the guilty's purse, then it cannot deter these petty offences. 

I'm not only asking to review the Railway laws alone. There must be a review of all existing laws which involve fine amounts. There might come an argument by lawmakers that it may be a tedious process to review each and every law and amend the fine amounts. Also they might come up and say that, such debates in the assemblies and parliament would be wasting the lawmakers' time since this review and amendment must be made on a regular basis (i.e.,) every time the value of money fluctuates.

Relative fine amounts


In order to ensure that the fine amounts are serious enough to prevent or to the very least control petty offences, a review of the laws are required, but not a case-by-case review. Instead all the existing laws can be amended and included a clause that establishes an equivalence to the amount in the year these respective laws were enacted to something whose value is relative to the economy.With that respect, gold would be  a very viable option. Since, the value of the gold is to a certain extent relative to the value of money. With fine amounts being related to the value of gold, we can have a control over the offenders and also to an extent ensure that there are no repeated offenders, since the price of 1 gram of gold in 1980 would not be the same in 2013.

The reason I am impressing on this equivalence is that, once I was travelling in train with a friend of mine. He, being a smoker couldn't restrain himself in the 8 hour long journey and went ahead to have a puff or two, despite telling that smoking in a moving train is an offence. He shrugged off my warning saying that he would pay the small amount of fine that is quoted as a punishment.

Including the 'equivalence of fine amount to the value of gold' would not be as tedious process as a review of the all the existing laws. All the lawmakers, even today, do not take into account, the future economic status of our country before enacting laws that involves punitive fine amounts. They resort to review only when faced by a huge public protest and mobilization. 

Extension of relevance 


This 'relevance to gold' system would not only be helpful in checking petty offences, it can also be put into use in various welfare schemes that are already existent. For example, the state government of Tamil Nadu provides Rs. 18000/- per annum to the disabled, as a relief measure for persons disabled in accidents in Factories and Industries. But this Rs. 1500/- per month would never help in meeting the person's needs. If the accident has made the laborer immobile because of the accident, this amount does no help, unless there are special grants by the Ministers or Chief Minister, which may not be the case for all the victims. Thus, to ensure a constant funding to keep the victim and his family, up and running, it is mandatory to establish an equivalence system. This equivalence system would also ensure that the laws need not be amended from time to time to catch up with the swelling economical situation of the nation. 

This relevance would definitely be a boon to the citizens, as it brings a 'win-win' situation, where the government shall benefit from the higher fine amounts and the citizens enjoying higher grants, as the amount they get would definitely be relative to the general economic situation of the country.