{"id":2878,"date":"2007-11-20T14:23:51","date_gmt":"2007-11-20T08:53:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/classic\/200711\/uphaar-and-strict-liability\/"},"modified":"2007-11-20T15:53:32","modified_gmt":"2007-11-20T10:23:32","slug":"uphaar-and-strict-liability","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/classic\/200711\/uphaar-and-strict-liability\/","title":{"rendered":"Uphaar and Strict Liability"},"content":{"rendered":"

Before I accepted deeksha from the Jagadguru, I used to be a libertarian, and believe that Strict Liability was a better alternative to regulation in cases like the Uphaar tragedy<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Strict Liability<\/a>” is a legal term of art.\u00a0 It means that the owners of the Uphaar cinema are liable in court for their act of omission, i.e. failure to provide for the safety of their patrons.<\/p>\n

There are many reasons why\u00a0I thought that strict liability is better than the kind of regulation where fire and safety inspectors from the municipal corporation visit to check if you are following government-specified norms.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For one thing, those inspectors can be bribed.\u00a0 Even if they cannot be, government-specified norms focus on the process<\/em>, while strict liability holds people responsible for results<\/em>. This means that the theatre owners cannot get away by saying “I was following all the norms. See, I even passed the inspection and everything!”<\/p>\n

Strict liability sets a moving target, and it will mean that the theatre owners will have to adhere to the best possible safety norms available at any point, not just the static ones set by the government.<\/p>\n

An inspection regime puts a burden on all people, both guilty and innocent, while strict liability will punish only the guilty. The cost the owners save on bribing the inspectors will be better spent on upgrading fire safety equipment. Reducing the cost of doing business will improve competition, which always is a good way to improve standards. And the money you save by sacking the inspectors can be spent on modernizing the courts and hiring more judges – so that the next trial need not take ten years to clear a sessions court.<\/p>\n

When I last wrote<\/a> about regulation, someone reminded me of that tired old aphorism “Prevention is better than cure”. But this is not\u00a0 a dichotomy between prevention and cure at all.\u00a0 Punishing the guilty is as much a preventive measure as subjecting theatre owners to a checklist. The only question is, which measure does a better job of preventing tragedies.<\/p>\n

Of course, all this thinking was prior to my transformation.\u00a0Now that I have accepted the\u00a0Jagadguru <\/a>into my heart,\u00a0I am\u00a0convinced that regulation can never fail.\u00a0\u00a0Any failure of regulation is evidence that we\u00a0do not have enough\u00a0regulation. Like\u00a0Boxer<\/a>,\u00a0\u00a0we must try harder. Krisham Vande Jagadguru!<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Before I accepted deeksha from the Jagadguru, I used to be a libertarian, and believe that Strict Liability was a better alternative to regulation in cases like the Uphaar tragedy.\u00a0 “Strict Liability” is a legal term of art.\u00a0 It means that the owners of the Uphaar cinema are liable in court for their act of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2878"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2878"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2878\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}