``I AM only doing this so my children never have to,''said Geeta Shetty, the deafening bass of a Bollywood hit booming from the bar behind, where she danced most nights to get strangers to throw money over her.

The next day, on the only bed in her one-room apartment in Bombay, she choked with tears watching 12-year-old daughter Vijaya Lakshmi, who wants to be a doctor, do her English homework.

"Every mother wants her kids to have the best. It's my duty to make sure they have the best education.?

In India, that means learning English.

But authorities are closing down Bombay's dance bars, saying they corrupt young men and breed crime and prostitution in India's financial and entertainment heart.

Without the work, Geeta will have to pull Lakshmi and six-year-old brother Vinayak out of the English language Greenland Private School.

"I want my kids to have a better life than I do,?said Geeta, who had swapped last night's tight, bright-green sari for a yellow salwar-kameez, a loose shirt and trouser.

The move by the government in the western state of Maharashtra, where Bombay is located, to ban 1,300 bars statewide will throw 75,000 unskilled and otherwise unemployable women like Geeta out of work.

A further 75,000 waiters, barmen, cooks and cleaners will lose their jobs if the ban, which was cleared by the cabinet earlier this year and is now awaiting the state governor's assent, goes into effect.

"These bars corrupt the younger generation and threaten the cultural fabric of the state,?said R R Patil, deputy chief minister and the driving force in the clean-up campaign.

"The ban will be enforced ruthlessly.?

'Get a real job?

The dancers and their backers say the bars are the only way the women, many of them single mothers, can earn a living. The ban will force thousands into prostitution in the city's slums, where many of their mothers actually started out, they argue.

Patil and other critics say dancers like Geeta should instead earn a "respectable?living in factories or as domestic servants.

"They should channel their energy into something positive. There are other ways,?said Harish Sadani, who formed Men Against Violent Abuse (MAVA) to fight the bars a few months ago.

"But they want easy money. They want exorbitant money,?he added, offering to help Geeta and others find alternative work in the few mills still working or elsewhere for 3,000 or 4,000 rupees (US$70-US$90) a month.

The dance bars themselves are hardly X-rated. The women wear saris, showing no more than their midriffs. The average music video or Bollywood "item number??raunchy song and dance routines ?shows more flesh.

Customers garland the girls with cash, or throw money ?the favourite way is to hold a wad of notes between thumb and finger and shower them over the dancer.

In the upmarket bars, where a rich customer spends thousands of dollars on a favoured dancer in one night, they are 100 or 500-rupee notes (US$2.30-US$11.50).

In Geeta's bar, smelling of toilet freshener and reached through a carpark above a pool hall, they throw 10-rupee notes.

The girls ?they are forced out of the business by about 30 ?take home 70 per cent of the tips and the bar owners 30.

"On a good night between 5,000 and 10,000 rupees. On a bad night, nothing,?Geeta said when asked how much she earned.

Geeta's boss, who doesn't want his name or his bar's published, said the government is using the ban to wring more bribes for itself and the police.

"Ten years ago, business was excellent, but the government and police harassment have chipped away at that,?he said. "Even ministers want their bribes.?

Others accuse the state government of playing the caste card for popularity. Most bars are owned by men from the Shetty caste in neighbouring Karnataka state and most of the dancers are low-caste women from poor states hoping to make it rich in the "city of dreams?

"There is a subterranean caste issue underneath everything that happens in India,?said Calcutta-based academic and social worker Pradip Bakshi.

Geeta is lucky. Her husband Ashok, 36, earns a modest living as a tailor. Although they need her money for the children's education, it is not vital for their survival.

In many other ways, though, her story is typical enough.

She began working when she was 13 or 14 alongside her father in one of Bombay's textile mills, most of which have gone out of business. A few years later, he died at the age of 42 and Geeta had to fend for her mother, two sisters and two brothers.

That's when she started dancing and met Ashok whose family cut him off when they married 12 years ago.

(Agencies via Xinhua)