Motorists driving in South Delhi were surprised to see a denim clad boy controlling traffic and helping the police wave down errant drivers under the scorching sun the last week. The boy was Deepak Gupta ,18, who was ordered by city court to do community service for 10 days as a punishment for drunken driving and without a lincense. As the first day came to a close he said to the reporters, " I regret the incident but this was a learning experience for me. Now I know how difficult it is to manage traffic. I hope others would learn from it."

It is more common in the West though, and unheard of in India. The city magistrate Mr Gautam Mann has showed a great insight into dealing with a teen-age folly. Had he been thrown in the custody with other prisoners he would have been embittered.

While reading this news item I was reminded of Osho's wake-up call to humanity-- it is high time we change our attitude towards crime and punishment. Judging a whole person by one misdeed is unscientific and inhuman.
He may have lost his balance in a moment of unconsciousness but stamping him as a criminal is not maturity either. "In the jails, the whole atmosphere speaks about one thing: to commit a crime is not crime, but to be caught is a crime. So learn the art of how to commit a crime without being caught.

"What is needed is that the man who is found committing some act against humanity has to be hospitalized or sent to the psychiatrist. He needs compassion, not punishment.

"A radical change is needed. And even if you want to change the individual, punishment is not the way. You can condemn the act, but you cannot condemn the individual. All that can be done is, he should be sent respectfully into a psychiatric nursing home, treated, helped, so the wound in his psychology which created the crime disappears. He should not be made to feel guilty. Sending him for a few months to jail is not going to help; it will simply confirm him as a criminal.

"In five years of living in jail, what is he going to learn? He will find there master thieves, murderers and all kinds of criminals, and they will teach him the art -- in which he must have been lacking. He will come out of the jail more skillful in doing the same crime or maybe even bigger crimes.

"I am against all punishment, I am against all imprisonment. Prisons should be transformed into hospitals, and people should be sent to centers of meditation where they can gain a little more awareness, a little more lovingness, a little more meditativeness."