Take That Sun Film OFF!

Starting today, sun films of all sorts are illegal. This is what the Supreme Court has decided in a bid to cut down on women assaults and kidnapping. Bizarre much?

So you are the religious kind of driver, who never drives faster than 40 kilometers per hour, sticks to lane regulations, never honks out of turn and goes an extra mile just to avoid incurring the wrath of our forever annoyed traffic policemen? Well, unless you take heed, the same policewallah who you have spent decades avoiding will be handing you a penalty ticket with a flourish. Along with a few chosen swear words in Marathi. ‘Coz that sun film on your car that you just can’t do without in the sweltering heat is now illegal. No kidding. 

According to a new seventeen page ruling by the Supreme Court of India, all kinds of sun film on cars are prohibited. And the penalty for not following the rule can be anything from a fine or confiscation, or even worse, the policeman may himself scratch it off, which means that the expensive glass you fitted for the window will never look the same again. Apart from the ban on sun film, tinted glasses need to allow 50% visual light transmission for side windows and 70% for front and rear windows. The reason? A petition filed by a citizen who feels that black sun film on car windows is the cause for violence against women, kidnapping and assault. WHAT a brainwave! Although we are a trifle upset that they stopped at sun film. Why not ban the use of cars altogether? After all, if it weren’t for cars with their sinister sun films and tinted windows, the crime rate against women would be zero.  

No one hits the nail on the head like our administrators do. Of course, there’s the little matter of the law and order scenario of the country which isn’t too conducive for women’s safety.   And it isn’t like the unwillingness of the judicial system to crack down on such crimes by adopting a zero tolerance policy is just encouraging the perpetrators. No, the Court took the noble initiative in curtailing these crimes by banning the use of sun films. 

Apart from protecting us from UV rays, sun films reduce the load on air conditioners and lessen the burning of fuel thus increasing mileage.  Not only that, the lamination even proves useful in accidents by reducing the chances of glass breakage. And while sun films may increase chances of assault, it can also work the other way round by providing safety by obscuring a thief’s view into the interior.

So can they tell us again HOW exactly is this helping the women? Even with full visibility of the vehicle’s interiors, we seriously doubt that the police will develop a sudden vigilance and will crack down on women assaults the way they single-mindedly hunt down drunk drivers. And while we are sure that the petitioner and the Court had everyone’s best interests at heart, they forgot a tiny little detail: Our traffic police department does not possess a single visibility testing meter, which means that they have no way of checking the darkness of the glass. And did we mention that one testing meter costs a cool fifty thousand grand?  So yeah, poverty rates may be increasing by spades, but our priority right now is to spend wads of money on equipping all traffic police departments with testing meters. 

The cherry on the cake is that VVIPs and important ministers will still be allowed to move around in cars with dark tinted windows. It’s hardly like they are going to hide anything, except maybe a few hundred crore worth of scams. So thanks, for trusting our ‘honest’ ministers over us. 

Sorry, but all we can see this rule doing is putting sun film manufacturers like V-Kool and Garware out of business. For a nation that prides itself on its intelligence, we sure have a way of inventing crappy rules. Or maybe this whole thing is a conspiracy to give the traffic policemen a chance to smugly fine us. Either way, this is just the latest in a long string of what-the-hell rules that we have no choice but to adhere to. Now do excuse us, we need to peel the sun film off our car windows before it gets towed away.

Young Flame

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