9 Things That Are Illegal In India But Nobody Cares

Whoever said India is intolerant has peanuts for brains. We’re the most tolerant nation in the world and we’re so so tolerant that we tolerate illegal activities being held out in broad daylight, day after day, as if it’s just a part of life. Some of these activities affect us, some don’t and some, we even find convenient. Let’s find out some of the most common illegal things that take place, routinely, without any regard for the law.

1. Child Labor

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You see them in roadside eateries, tea-shops, garages, shops and everywhere. Many of them are even working as domestic help. The Child Labor (Prohibition and Regulation) Act was implemented in 1986 and expanded in 2006 and 2008. However, it did not help much to change the scene of child labor in the country.

The problem is, although it has been legalized, the authorities cannot force people from sending their children to work instead of school because a large section of such families come from extremely poor section of the society. However, a more strict approach could ensure people refraining from giving birth to children just to earn out of them.

 

2. Red Light Areas

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Every city has it. The red light areas essentially associated to the sex industry along with other anti-social activities going on without much interference from the authorities.

Unlicensed prostitution, abuse, sex-rackets are just a part of everyday life in these areas. Children are born in brothels, grow up with prostitutes and pimps, and often choose between the two professions for it’s not too unnatural a vocation when you see your mother sweat it out as a sex worker while growing up.

 

3. Piracy

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This is one of those illegal activities that we don’t mind at all. The independent music industry has almost evaporated in India because record labels are not really keen on signing musicians whose albums can be simply copied and sold in the streets without the label getting any money.

Bollywood as well, faces the brunt of the flourishing piracy industry and a studies have shown that the loss incurred by the entertainment industry dues to piracy is about Rs 16,000 crores. The 2008 report has also mentioned the loss of more than 800,000 jobs in the entertainment industry as an effect of piracy.

 

4. Girl Child Abortion and Sex Determination

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Both are illegal in India but clinics offering the concerned services are in plenty. We like to think that we are past those horrible days when India would consider the girl child as a burden and nip it at the bud but we’re still carrying the tradition and quite proudly at certain parts of the country. The laws against the practice of sex determination had been in implemented in 1994 but the number of female fetus abortions has not dipped.

However, earlier this month a suggestion to make sex determination compulsory was put forward by Union Woman and Child Development Minister Maneka Gandhi. The idea is to determine the sex, get the fetus registered before birth and track if the child was born or not.

 

5. Selling counterfeit goods

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Another malpractice we don’t really mind. A lot of us belong to the Middle Class section of the society but still want to sport good clothes, accessories and shoes. If we can buy products that look exactly like the branded ones and cost less than half, why complaint?

According to recent reports, counterfeit of replica goods cost the Indian government an annual loss of Rs 15,000 crores. The hotbed for selling and buying replica goods is the online market and the practice is prevalent in all kinds of commodity products starting from clothes, food to even medicine.

 

6. Selling backyard brewed alcohol

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The problem with illegal liquor is that they often contain battery acids, chemical solvents, methyl alcohol which makes them strong and hard to give you the alcohol high of your life but are detrimental to the health. The laws against the selling of such alcohol are strict in India but the industry is still a thriving one.

Poor people from every part of the country consume the poison in the name of cheap alcohol and the number of deaths caused by desi daru every year is nothing less than shocking. However, the addas manage to survive with negotiations with authorities despite the laws against them.

 

7. Begging rackets all over the country

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The Bombay Prevention of Begging Act, 1959 considers begging as a crime and the law had been adopted by Delhi as well. Interestingly, no cases have been registered under the Act as of yet which should mean that there are no beggars in our cities but we all know that’s not how it is.

If the law should be implemented more strictly debatable because the country may not have the resource to rehabilitate every beggar. However, the alarming part is the rise of the begging mafias all over the country who traffic humans into the practice of seeking alms on street.

 

8. Adulteration in food

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Milk gets adulterated with urea over permissible amounts, rice grains get adulterated with stones, mustard oil gets adulterated with crude rice bran oil and the list only continues. The turmeric powder used in households are often adulterated with ‘metanil yellow’ which are produced with ingredients such as diphenylamine and metanilic acid and it can cause cancer to our bodies.

Several packaged water bottles claim to be ‘mineral waters’ without having any ISI or BIS authentication. This is is just the tip of the ice-berg of the food adulteration scene in India in spite of the strict laws against it.

 

9. Roadside dentists

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The Chapter V, Section 49 of the Dentist Act of 1948 deems street dentistry as illegal. However, the country is full of such unlicensed dentists who can do the bridging of your teeth for as much as Rs 125 while a licensed professional in his clinic would charge Rs 10,000 for the same.

There are no clinic, no chairs, no electric drills required for dentistry in these roadside chambers and you can just walk to them without an appointment and get your tooth removed with equipment that may or may not be sanitized. It is common practice in many cities of India, including Delhi and nobody seems to be much bothered about it.

And they say we are intolerant!

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