This is rare, believe-it-or-not news.

Seekers of driver’s licenses will need to take a driving test before a license can be issued, we were told over the weekend.

Yes, you read it right. Indians will have to actually drive a car, or ride a motorbike, before they can be handed driver’s licenses.

You might have considered that a given in most, if not all, countries. After all, many of us have got our driver’s licenses only after taking a driving test. But apparently it has never applied to all applicants and the driving test was not a necessary requirement as, say, the photo on the application form. Mere certification by a driving school, obviously only the authorized ones, was considered ample proof of a person’s driving skills.

Of course, the suggestion to impose a driving test on applicants is still only a proposal, not a law. It is one of many changes being considered as India bids to overhaul the Motor Vehicles Act, last amended in hardly so-long-ago 1988, when one thought officials would have recognized that driver’s licenses can be issued only to drivers who can actually demonstrate driving skills.

While on the subject of law, it must be remembered that India has many archaic laws that can at times be amusing and at some other times plain infuriating. Remember the homosexuality law which, hopefully, has been nailed. In recent weeks, one that has seemed silly is the so-called “abetment to suicide” charge leveled at a cop who was only recently convicted on a 19-year-old charge of molesting an under-aged girl, Ruchika Girhotra.

S.P. Rathore deserves no sympathy. In any other developed country, he would have been convicted within weeks and punished with something far more than a fine of Rs. 1,000 (less than USD25). But trying to stick the “abetment to suicide” charge on him is absurd, even if it was a minor girl who was driven to suicide, probably by the incident involving Rathore.

When does somebody push another into killing himself or herself? And, pray, how does one do it?  These are unanswerable questions involving the state of mind of at least two people. An abetment to suicide law should be used only to charge people who directly assist another in committing suicide, not for frivolous show of muscle, or intent, as it is being used to target Rathore when precious little was done for 19 years.

Laws such as these diminish India’s standing in the eyes of the world. When can India rid itself of its 19th century laws? And how? Should we have an all-encompassing panel for legal reform?