Mind your Pees and Thoos


Mumbai has just released its ‘fines’ data. Most fines have been levied on people peeing on roads (65%) followed by those spitting. The fines have been levied by special beat marshals who’ve been recruited to reprimand and levy fines from citizens for various reasons. There are 120 odd marshals which essentially means one marshal for 1.5 lakh citizens! The equivalent cop ratio is one cop every 50000 citizens. These beat marshals have been assigned wards within which they’re supposed to operate. I head out every day to work but haven’t seen these Marshals ever, not surprising given the ratio above.
If we try and analyse how the average Marshal might work, the truth is simple. There are certainly more number of people peeing than chewing paan and spitting. Everybody needs to pee but not everyone needs to chew paan and spit. If we did then we might have bigger industry players in the paan business than just the nukkad panwala. The fines for spitting and peeing are the same. Anyone who’s lived in Mumbai will know that there are certified popular peeing spots in every locality. These are alleys, wall fronts, railway walls etc which seemed to have been always built for these purposes. The smarter marshals might station themselves around these watering holes and collect their fines once the deed is done. In fact with peeing catching someone in the act is easier compared to say spitting which is a blink and you miss kind of activity. With the incentives for peeing and spitting being the same, it’s very clear why marshals gather more from peeing fines that spitting.
In fact half of what’s collected goes to the agencies who run these marshals! 120 marshals collected 6 crore rupees in 7 months that’s roughly about 90 lakh a month for the entire group or 3 lakh per day i.e roughly about 2500 per marshal per day. Rs 200 is the fine per act of peeing which really means if I get 15 people to pee on a certain wall in a day, I make my average. The rest is a bonus. If we assume, conservatively that 10% of Mumbai’s working population pees atleast once a year on a wall somewhere, that’s a whopping 1800 crore just out of spotting and fining people who pee. Now now, do we have a business proposition here or what!

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