Like every one else, I have been following the hapless Sanjay Dutt’s fate ever since his conviction, confinement in Mumbai and then his subsequent transfer to Pune’s historic Yerwada prison where many freedom fighters were imprisoned in pre independence days.
With all the media attention given to him, you can’t really escape it. But what caught my attention was how Sanjay Dutt will be doing during his term in prison. It seems that he will or already has undergone an "aptitude test" to ascertain his preferences before being allotted work at Yerwada prison where he is serving the six-year jail term given to him in the 1993 Mumbai blasts case.
Given the fact that he has been sentenced to rigorous imprisonment, he is expected to put in some work during his stay. And the choices that he has been offered include textiles, laundry, baking, paper printing, carpentry and painting.
The 48-year-old star, will be asked his “choices and preferences” before he is allotted manual work as part of the rigorous imprisonment In the early years of the twenty first century, the choices and options available made available to the individual prisoner make interesting reading.
Further, it seems that Sanjay Dutt is actually “lucky” for the Yerwada prison according to the Times of India offers the most diverse range of prison industry available in India. Convicts can choose from rope-making, black-smithing, quarrying, button-making, gardening, painting and polishing, book-binding, sewing, cane-work, envelope-making or sawing. All the various categories of work on offer are listed under chapter 22 on 'employment of prisoners" in the prison manual.
Considering The prison system in India is governed by the colonial Prisons Act 1894 and the Prisoners Act 1900, it would not be surprising if the Pali Hill residing Sanjay Dutt found nothing to his liking and training and has apparently settled down to being a temporary cook for the 3000 odd prisoners in the jail. India’s penal system and its evolution (or is it devolution) is well worth a study.
A colonial era government allowed Jawaharlal Nehru the liberty and the opportunity to write such masterpieces as the Discovery of India and Glimpses of World History from within prison worlds but the government of a democratic and free country has done nothing to modernize and reform and thereafter construct a reformist prison code to replace the century old prison manual. 391in fact, operating in the shadow of the old existing law, it has sought to create and enact more draconian laws and enactments. A serious student of history might well ponder why Gandhiji and the others bothered to agitate against the Rowlatt Act in 1919 which authorized the government to imprison people without trial, when democratic governments in free India have done the same or more.
Coming back to Sanjay Dutt and his travails, while one may well understand that the larger subject of penal reform has a policy component to it and may require a measure of political will as well as a measure of statesmanship, even the mundane provisions of the prison manual remain as arcane as when Gandhiji spun his spinning wheel at the Yerwada prison. 520 can you imagine rope making , button making , book binding and quarrying as the only means of creating gainful employment for prisoners ?
Which century are we living in? Clearly the trades that the British era clerks found useful in that time and age have never been updated. Instead of teaching prisoners skills that are economically viable and employment generating, we are stuck with trades and crafts that are dated and obsolescent, are meaningless in every way and can only sap morale and not rejuvenate it.
Sanjay Dutt’s imprisonment has led to many kinds of stories and media scoops but it would be good if the while episode also throws a spot light on prison reforms and how those who live behind shadows in an unseen world stagnate and vegetate away behind walls where the clock has ceased to tick.
(Shantanu Dutta is a doctor by training and a NGO worker and social analyst by vocation. He is based in Delhi.)
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