One can only marvel at the recent initiative of Hyderabad’s Chanchalguda Central Jail to offer a ‘Feel the Jail’ experience to citizens at a price—₹2,400 for a 24-hour stay behind bars and half-price for a half-day sojourn. Many former prisons play on jail fetish, with those converted into hotels in Oxford, Boston and Helsinki leaning on their unsavoury history to sell rooms. On any visit to Andaman’s Cellular Jail, the panopticon built in 1906 to house Indian political prisoners, one may see honeymooners taking pictures of each other behind bars. But Hyderabad throws up a rare chance at prospective justice. If the politicians who scoff at criminal charges lodged against them can be coaxed to stay overnight, maybe they will be tempted to stay on the straight and the narrow thenceforth.
