The Brave Pedestrian

People get the government that they deserve. Similarly, they get the judiciary that they deserve. So far, after Independence, we have acted as SUBJECTS of colonial masters when face-to-face with judges. And so we got a colonial sort of judiciary... because judges, like any other human being, usually go by the expectations of people surrounding them. Judges are surrounded by people who bow and scrape and abjectly beg; so what else can you expect from them but tyrannical behavo ur? Now, to change this existing reality, we have to start facing them as CITIZENS, and make them aware that they are public servants. As this sort of behaviour builds up around them, they will be forced to change their behaviour and thinking. The change may happen gradually, over some years. And in the meantime, we can expect scenes like the one shown in this cartoon  smile emoticon Like  ·  Comment  ·  Share

Even honest judges are guilty of covering up the sins of their corrupt colleagues, by using the contempt law against outspoken citizens and media-persons. Bribery among judges is an "open secret" Like  ·  Comment  ·  Share

Knowledgeable court insiders understand that the merits of your case are of little importance. Their first question is, "Who is appearing for you?" Their second question is, "You are before which bench?" Third question: "Who is appearing for the other side?" Based on your replies to these questions, they sometimes shake their head in sympathy for you. "No chance, you will be dismissed," they say sadly, without even looking at your prayers, interim reliefs sought and case laws cited. Surprisingly, their predictions are quite accurate. Why is this so? Let us understand. Like  ·  Comment  ·  Share

Is Supreme Court a PART-TIME GUARDIAN of our fundamental rights? Individuals can enjoy leaves, including study leave, casual leave and sick-leave for much more than six months... but can the ENTIRE ORGAN OF GOVERNANCE remain closed for weeks or months? (And please, don't anybody mention vacation judges, who provide only a loincloth of judicial service!) Evidently, it can! And according to the hon'ble judges, India is hale and hearty despite such institutionalized absenteeism. So, let the whole country follow the noble example of our judges, and accordingly, let the government sanction SIX WEEK SUMMER VACATIONS FOR: 1) Police 2) Central & State Government, including Prime Minister, Chief Minister, entire cabinet and entire secretariat. 3) Entire Army, Navy, Air Force and Border Security Force. Let them coordinate the dates to match with summer vacations for the armed forces of Pakistan, China and Bangladesh across the borders. No surprise invasions and ter...

Every few days, the media reports a big judgment that makes it look like judiciary is a defender of democracy and upholder of human rights. But what goes unreported is that every single day, lakhs of undertrials and litigants, and their families, suffer needless pain, humiliation, disappointment, anxiety and mind-numbing expenditure. And exploitation by lawyers. These are the victims of judiciary. Nobody is interested in their story of unending misery. Because there is nothin g grand, colourful or decisive to report -- just human lives rendered meaningless in shades of muddy gray. For these victims of judiciary, media stories about grand judgments are surely like salt rubbed into their wounds. Like  ·  Comment  ·  Share

Bhopal gas tragedy is a blatant example of how judiciary behaves when the interests of big business clashes with those of the common man. Over 5 lakh persons were exposed to the crippling gas Methyl Iso Cyanate (MIC) on the night of 2-3 December, 1984. 3,787 died, 3,900 were severely and permanently disabled. 26 years later, in June 2010, seven former employees of UCIL (including Keshub Mahindra, non-executive chairman) were convicted of causing death by negligence. Each was  sentenced to two years imprisonment and fined of Rs. one lakh. All were released on bail shortly after the verdict. BOTTOMLINE: NOT EVEN ONE PERSON RESPONSIBLE HAS BEEN JAILED YET, 30 years after the world's worst industrial disaster. Like  ·  Comment  ·  Share

If pendency were under control and appellants got a fair hearing, Supreme Court's 6-week summer vacations could possibly have been justified. But such is emphatically not the case. Judges dismiss a majority of the appeals immediately, not even giving a few second to appellants -- many of whom have travelled across the country, and have suffered great financial difficulties to come this far. Many judges contemptuously THROW THE APPELLANT'S FILES on the floor after a couple of  seconds of perfunctory hearing, showing callous disregard for the litigants and the appeal process! Despite such hurried methods, the queue of pending cases before SC is growing longer every year. And the Supreme Court judges have the sheer gall to go on lengthy vacations, en masse! Like  ·  Comment  ·  Share

If our new Prime Minister is really a common man at heart, he should take initiatives to ensure that judiciary becomes accessible to the common man. Like  ·  Comment  ·  Share

Modi-sarkar should pluck the LOW-HANGING FRUITS to give quick results -- such as immediately eradicating "anadi courts" where lakhs of people are ill-treated daily. Installing CCTV cameras in all courts would be a good way to make magistrates, judges, public prosecutors and police stop ill-treating the common man. Like  ·  Comment  ·  Share

India's judiciary comes with a cursed legacy -- 32 million pending cases based on British-era laws like IPC and CrPC. In the eyes of judiciary, Indians are not citizens, but subjects, to be held captive with jurisprudence based on imperialism. The backlog of cases is a huge mess created by lawyers taking stay orders and tareekh pe tareekh, and judges giving it indiscriminately. The language and culture of our jurisprudence is Latin; it is so alien to India's culture that no o rdinary Indian citizen can understand it. Appointments to the higher judiciary are done by a cabal, with a level of mystery resembling appointment of the Pope in Vatican. It is almost as if judiciary is not an organ of India's democratic governance, but an alien thing transplanted from a European mummy. Not only is judiciary arbitrary and rampantly corrupt, but case laws themselves have been distorted by judgments given for money or favours. The question arises: Can this distorted, defor...

Judiciary is an institution for engaging the common man in an endless legal battle, from which there is no exit. It does not promise him justice, but it tells him that directly fighting against his oppressors is illegal, and therefore, he has no option except to go to court. By a subtle creeping process of institutionalized delay & procedure-based denial of justice, India’s common man is being convinced that he is insignificant, and that he can never get justice. Very slowly, year after year, as pendency increases and the possibility of getting justice grows more distant for the common man, he comes to believe in his own powerlessness. That is the creeping danger facing We The People. Like  ·  Comment  ·  Share

The common experience of litigants is that judiciary is NOT for implementation of the laws passed by legislature, and it is NOT for giving justice to the common man. More than anything else, it is for the exercise of judge's discretionary powers, and their ability to grant "prayers" -- whether lawful or otherwise. How can you reform a judiciary that considers law implementation and justice to be merely by-products? Like  ·  Comment  ·  Share

Judiciary is not like a "pipeline" meant for maximizing the output; it is a "filter" that reduces the output to a thin trickle, and retains the maximum number of cases in circulation for an indefinite number of years. Justice i.e. final judgments, is NOT its objective. Its true purpose is SYSTEMATIC DENIAL OF JUSTICE. This deception and exploitation of Indian citizens has been going on since 1947, when we adopted and continued the BRITISH COLONIAL SYSTEM of administration, judiciary, army and police WITHOUT ANY CHANGES. Like  ·  Comment  ·  Share

Shailesh Gandhi recently wrote to our new Chief Justice R M Lodha, and suggested some remedies for giving timely justice to people of India. Read this letter  http://bit.ly/1kaZ7AS  and give feedback to Shailesh. Please email him on shaileshgan@gmail.com Like  ·  Comment  ·  Share

The public often finds that judges avoid taking action against corrupt government officials and politicians. That is because, as the saying goes, those who live in glass houses avoid throwing stones. Every judge carries the guilt of having been elevated to his current position by doing favours to government officials, politicians, senior counsels, etc. in exchange for recommendations to the collegium. His entire career is controlled by the collegium of judges at High Courts and Supreme Court. There are no rules, no benchmarks, no due process to be followed, and no reference to any institution created by any law; the words of the collegiums -- which are illegal -- are the only law. How can such judges and chief justices safeguard our fundamental rights against encroachment by the powers-that-be? Like  ·  Comment  ·  Share

S Rajendra Babu, former Chief Justice of India, said, “Many of our poor fellow citizens have chosen to avoid courts and other legal systems rather than face intimidation, cost and time-loss in legal proceedings.” But it’s not only the poor! Even the middle-classes and the well-to-do have made up their mind that GOING TO COURT IS NOT A REALISTIC OPTION. Most people go to court in the heat of the moment, or they are given false hopes by lawyers. But they soon realize that they  have walked into a quicksand. They realize that there is MORE INJUSTICE IN COURT. A few people get sucked into an ENDLESS CYCLE OF COMPLAINING against lawyers and judges, and multiplying litigations in response to their sufferings in court. The whole lives, and life-savings, of lakhs of such people are consumed by fruitless litigation. Like  ·  Comment  ·  Share

Here are the extracts of two Facebook conversations I had with advocate friends, which I'm combining and reproducing here for the purpose of thought and discussion: ADVOCATE: hello sir,i would like to share something with you... even though i like and i agree by ur each and every post, i m scared of commenting, sharing or liking it because i m afraid of contempt of court.... dont u feel so? SUMMARY OF MY RESPONSES: Hi. If you like, comment on or share my judiciary posts on FB , you will be one among thousands of people who have done that... including at least 100 lawyers. I may of course be prosecuted for contempt of court sooner or later (because maybe I will make a mistake and overstep the line in a poster). But ask yourself, is it possible that they will prosecute hundreds or thousands of people for liking, commenting and sharing? I feel it is unlikely. Many of the FB forums are moderated. My posts appear only after the moderator allows them. I am posting on roughly 2...

Is judiciary a back-breaking burden that Indian citizens have been carrying since Independence, simply because nobody believed it was possible to put it down and review the whole thing? Must we remain stuck with this huge tangled mess of cases that tareekh-pe-tareekh has rendered meaningless? Millions of cases based on archaic British-era laws (like IPC, CrPC and CPC) continue to linger and obstruct the path of new litigants. Many cases have been badly damaged by profiteering  lawyers and insensitive judges, but continue only to provide livelihood to lawyers and judges, and occupy space and time in courts. They only cause harassment to citizens, and reduce the efficiency of the economy. No good is coming out of such proceedings, only harm. Shouldn't we clean the cobwebs of the past and start afresh? We The People have the power to clean our attic, drive away the poisonous insects and throw away the useless files where such insects breed. Like  · ...

In the days of British Raj, the rulers used the judiciary to overawe us, their subjects whom they referred to as "natives". And so they had judges in full British costumes with the servants and bodyguards in Indian costumes, and this made it amply clear to us that they were in charge of our country. Judiciary was a tool to make us dependent on our colonial masters for resolving our own disputes. The British were fantastic at running such colonial courts throughout the length  and breadth of their empire, with similar methods. They made a great show of justice and fairness, and succeeded in convincing us that our Indian laws and methods of dispute resolution were totally inferior, and that there was no substitute for British justice. This huge costume drama impressed upon us that King George or whoever -- and his minions, the judges, had an indisputable authority over even the Indian kings, princes and upper classes. India's masses had no choice but to fall in line! ...