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Decision Time: Illuminating Performance in India’s District Courts
No full textStudies on court administration in India have so far focused their attention largely on caseload management and judge strength of the higher judiciary. In-depth investigations of the performance of India’s lower courts, the primary loci of a citizen’s contact with the judiciary, are rarer, largely due to the lack of available data at scale. We conduct a quantitative analysis of a large dataset of more than 1700 Indian district courts between 2010 and 2018, to assess court performance through the measure of timeliness of case disposal. We use median days to decision—the median number of days it takes for a district court in India to decide a case. We aim to understand the impact of well-established factors—working strength and tenure of judges, case administration, age distribution of cases, and category or case type—against district courts’ performance. We find that court type and nature of cases are important predictors of a district court’s performance, and that the total number of judge working days and average bench strength are not good indicators of courts’ performance—the workload per judge being actually lower in low-performance district courts, compared to high-performing courts. Our study also reveals the strengths and weaknesses of the available judicial data platforms and points toward reforms in judicial administration to address these concerns
Water Justice and Groundwater Subsidies in India: Equitable and Sustainable Access and Regulation
No full textThis book examines the impact of water-related subsidies on social and distributive equity and environmental sustainability in groundwater access and regulation in India.
This book argues that adopting a water justice framework is essential to ensure equitable and sustainable access to and regulation of groundwater by balancing anthropogenic and ecological water needs. The inherent inequity resulting from property rights-controlled groundwater access gets widened by the social, political, and economic factors determining the subsidy beneficiaries. Adopting a socio-legal approach, this book draws on two contrasting case studies in India: Kerala, a water-secure state, and Rajasthan, an arid state. Arguing for a shift to a new paradigm in water governance, it critically examines the feasibility of the public trust doctrine and rights of nature discourse to analyse the best suitable regulatory framework that can balance the human right to water and ecological sustainability in groundwater resources. It demonstrates the feasibility of adopting various environmental law principles that balance human rights to water and nature. It argues that the hitherto highlighted public trust doctrine cannot address these inequities due to its anthropogenic bias and property rights link. This book examines the applicability of the rights of nature discourse instead of these property rights-based regulations to incorporate and mainstream the concerns of aquifer protection in water governance.
This book shall be of great interest to students, scholars, and practitioners of water law and policy, environmental law, water and social justice, development studies, and political ecology.https://repository.nls.ac.in/books/1052/thumbnail.jp
Codification of Arbitrator’s Duty of Disclosure: Lessons from the Indian Experience
No full textA recent consultation paper by the U.K. Law Commission has opined that U.K. arbitration law must consider codifying the duty of disclosure. On the other hand, countries like India already prescribe a set of circumstances that are required to be disclosed by an arbitrator to prevent any possible bias. This paper analyses the statutory codification of the duty of disclosure in India and opines as to how the Indian experience can be used as a road map by countries like the U.K. for codification of this duty
Let’s Talk about AI in Academia
No full textInstitution-level dialogues can help in setting up both general and discipline-specific guidelines on what constitutes permissible AI assistance, and what is not
Stolen by Wolves: A Critique on the Supreme Court’s Understanding of Women’s Reservations in India
No full textWomen’s reservations were envisioned under Article 15(3) to fulfil the goal of substantive equality in the Constitution of India. This article tries to uncover the procedural missteps that have occurred by the Supreme Court while administering the policy of women’s reservations to various public positions in the country. I argue that the reservation procedure currently put in place by the apex Court by a cumulative reading of the decisions in Anil Kumar Gupta v State of UP and Ors and Rajesh Kumar Daria v Rajasthan Public Service Commision have created an enclosed ceiling on women candidates and is contrary to the broader goal of increasing women’s representation as highlighted by the ruling of Indra Sawhney. This has led to the cumulative disenfranchisement of women and especially marginalized women from coveted public positions and has further entrenched their group disadvantage qua men. The policy procedure set by the Supreme Court has trickled down to various rulings of the High Court due to the doctrine of precedent and has made this a nationwide issue. I also argue that the reservation procedure is a form of intersectional discrimination and would be suspect on the anvils of Articles 14,15 and 16 of the Constitution. It is therefore of urgent need that this reservation procedure be reviewed under the guiding principles of Indra Sawhney in order to enable the cherished goal of substantive equality in gender justice
Foreign Sovereign Immunity Doctrine: A TWAIL Perspective
No full textAs Prof. B.S. Chimni has shown, while the international law of state jurisdiction masquerades as a technical procedural rule, it has long served the capitalist and imperialist interests of Western States—a revelation that aligns with Third World Approaches to International Law (‘TWAIL’). It is no surprise then that the international law on foreign sovereign immunity—which is a subset of the law of state jurisdiction—has also furthered the capitalist interests of Western countries. This tendency is reflected in the United States’ Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, 1976 (‘FSIA’), which is one of the most important domestic foreign sovereign immunity regimes. Under the FSIA, foreign sovereigns are immune from the jurisdiction of U.S. courts unless an exception to immunity applies. Judicial approaches to the FSIA’s most central immunity exception—which relates to the commercial activity of foreign sovereigns—starkly demonstrate how U.S. capitalist interests are bolstered by this statutory regime. While few academics have explored this and other ways in which the FSIA furthers the capitalist, imperialist interests of the United States, the issue deserves more attention from TWAIL scholars given the FSIA’s global influence
Democracy, Universalism and Informal Employment: The Committee on Freedom of Association and South Asia
No full textThis chapter focuses on how the CFA has influenced democratic processes and trade union rights in South Asia, particularly in relation to the intersection between political and labour rights and the relationship between trade union rights and civil liberties. Ms Sankaran illustrates this relationship by referring to a number of cases in the region in which emergency regulations have impacted on the daily exercise of trade union rights, with reference to the guidance provided by the CFA in this respect. She also recalls the large numbers of workers in the informal economy in the region, who are restricted in the exercise of their right to organize and bargain collectively in law or practice. She highlights the challenges faced by these workers in having recourse to the CFA and suggests avenues for greater access by all workers to meaningful protection of these rights
How Dravidian Politics Offers a Bulwark Against the Exclusionary Politics of Hindutva
No full textExcerpt:
\u27...While Hindutva is here to stay as a political force, it cannot ignore the politics of social justice. The BJP has shown itself to be flexible in accommodating diverse voices to present its vision of Hindu Rashtra as not based on orthodoxy-inspired social hierarchy but as compatible with modern democracy. What does this mean for Tamil Nadu politics, where Dravidian parties pride themselves on their agenda of social justice, and where the BJP is desperate to make its entry?\u2
Entry, Market Structures and Welfare
No full textConventionally, entry is thought to enhance welfare by enhancing competition and hence lowering prices and increasing the output. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, working with an n-firm Cournot oligopoly set up and using the trigger strategies, we show that entry may or may not impact welfare. However, entry has the potential to alter the market structure from collusion to Cournot competition, and when it does so, there is a discontinuous rise in welfare
Oppressed, Backward, or Subaltern? Revisiting Hardgrave’s The Nadars of Tamilnad
No full textRobert L Hardgrave’s book titled The Nadars of Tamilnad (1969), a study of a caste in South India and the politics of self-assertion in the colonial and postcolonial period, is revisited. This book is read in light of discussions on subaltern studies and caste