LEGAL MATTERS

Look for ‘Free’ Water at the Multiplex

Once upon a time, going to the cinema was easy. With a fifty-rupee note in your pocket, all you had to do was take off the school tie, loosen the collar button, and hop on to the local bus that would stop right in front of the cinema theatre. Normal tickets were normally priced, popcorns were white, colas came in glass bottles, and you could carry your own water inside the hall. Then what happened? Well, the popcorn counter changed in its contours, for one. Two, the colour of water changed as it became a prized commodity – to be sold over the counter and made profit on.

Dr Prem Lata, Consumer Awakening Former Member, CDRF-Delhi

The Commission had ruled that cinema halls must provide free drinking water as it was a basic necessity and not everyone might be in a position to afford it at the ‘exorbitant rates’ at which it was available in the halls.

“A movie watcher may include old and infirm persons as well as children for whom it would be difficult to manage without water for three hours or more. Water being a basic necessity for human beings, it is obligatory for the cinema hall to make