The unfortunate incident in a downtown Bangalore pub where two customers had a fatal fall through a window has turned the attention of the police and civic agencies on to bars and restaurants that operate on rooftops and terraces. The law will take its course in this particular mishap and those responsible for the negligence brought to book.
What is perturbing, though, is that the police have recommended that all rooftop bars and restaurants have 6ft tall barriers to prevent such accidents. Going by past experience, such as when the Mumbai authorities came down on all rooftop businesses after a fire in two Kamala Mills restaurants, ordering closures and demolitions, this proposed regulation might mean a crackdown on all rooftop bars and restaurants in Bangalore.
If these establishments are forced to shut down while new safety rules are drawn up and enforced, it would be another blow to an industry already struggling with constraints that severely hamper business. The 6ft tall barrier rule could in itself be an absurdity when rooftop pubs have been functioning perfectly safely for decades in Bangalore.
This, then, is another case of the restaurant industry being the victim of knee-jerk responses from the authorities after a solitary case of negligence or an isolated mishap. As Manu Chandra, head of the Bangalore chapter of the National Restaurant Association of India was quoted as saying, ‘An accident like this could have occurred in an apartment or a mall. Would they shut that down, too?’ The analogies could be stretched. BMTC buses mow down pedestrians. Are they taken off the roads, or even confined to bus lanes? And so on.
The restaurant industry is scarcely playing victim when it says it is a soft target for the authorities. It is frequently singled out for harsh curbs and actions by the civic agencies and the police. If we think about it, there seems to be at some subconscious level and somewhere in our misplaced sense of morality, the notion that pubs and bars are places of vice and licentiousness. To act against them is a display of virtuous conduct. There is then a need to understand and appreciate that these spaces are vital to a modern, urban landscape and culture. Only then will the food & beverage industry be able to truly thrive, not merely struggle to survive.
