The Brave Pedestrian

Mumbai, 25 th May, 2016: While we are sitting in the comfort of our homes, an unfolding tragedy is transforming proud flat-owners into paupers and destitutes who will die in tiny rented homes, senior citizens homes or in the houses of their children, and the memories of the flats that they once owned will be cremated with them. In the name of redevelopment, millions of flat owners are being led like sheep to the slaughter – not only humble salaried workers, unthinking housewives, aged pensioners, over-dependent widows, but also doctors, lawyers, CAs, MBAs, MNC executives, bureaucrats, businessmen, tech-savvy housewives and career-women. Cooperative housing societies are full of financial illiteracy, ignorance of ground realities, overconfidence and gullibility. The redevelopment mantra of cooperative housing societies is: "jo sabka hoga, woh hamara hoga, bharosa rakho" i.e. "What happens to others will happen to us, so have faith." A few thousand buil...

Unknown to most litigants, judges exercise both judicial and managerial powers in their courts. Currently, courts & their infrastructure and manpower resources are grossly mismanaged, and the result is seen as huge pendencies, endless tareekh pe tareekh, mishandling of court records, etc. For assisting judges by taking over court management functions, many states have recently appointed qualified COURT MANAGERS (MBAs) with salaries of Rs 50,000 to Rs 1 lakh per month. (Read t his to get an idea of their service conditions and functions:  http://www.allahabadhighcourt.in/…/court_manager_16-04-12.p… But sadly, the judges and their clerical staff have responded very negatively to this scheme. Rather than delegating functions to court managers, and using them to save time and improve their own effectiveness, judges and their staff are doing their best to demoralize and demotivate the court managers, and render them ineffective, so that this scheme may be scrapped within a ...