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| March 6, 2000 | ||
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the Law Agitating lawyers are worried about an income cut. Not justice.
Aside from a probable income cut, what is worrying lawyers is the deletion of the intra-court appeal mechanism. In simple terms this means the verdict of a single judge in a high court cannot be appealed against before a division bench. Any review will have to be sought from the Supreme Court. The law minister says this will save time; morality-overdriven lawyers claim this will harm the interests of the poor, who will not be able to travel to Delhi to seek the reversal of an unfavourable judgement. About the only case the lawyers have is in their argument that foreign legal consultants' proposed entry be governed by the right to reciprocity. That single demand, however, does not merit a nationwide strike. The lawyers are protesting too much, too late. In an Antique Land It's time to bridge the gulf between Bihar and India
An American study once rated Bihar India's best-governed state. In the four decades since then, the state has come to symbolise all that can go wrong -- and has gone wrong -- with this country. South Bihar is a mineral treasure-trove -- and also the world's largest poorhouse. Infrastructure is non-existent. Paying state employees is a Houdini-like act of financial contortion performed monthly by the secretariat in Patna. Large-scale privatisation of armed conflict, once the favourite subject of morbid futurologists, is an everyday occurrence for Bihar. To rescue the state, the new regime -- with the Centre's cooperation -- has to look beyond cliched rhetoric. There is, for instance, this well-meaning but misplaced belief that land reforms will solve all Bihar's problems. It ignores the futility of already fragmented, unproductive holdings. What Bihar needs is lavish spending in the social sector. Over a decade ago, it inaugurated the first state-specific primary education mission. Today the Bihar Education Project is moribund. Perhaps the incoming chief minister's first task should be to revitalise it. |
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The
act amending the Civil Procedure Code (CPC) was passed by Parliament in 1999 and is due to
be notified shortly. It aims at putting some order to the mess that is litigation in
India. There are 30 million cases -- civil and criminal -- pending before various courts.
It will take over three centuries for all of them to reach resolution under the present
juridical dispensation. Acting on reports by the Law Commission and others it received in
1997, the government sought to expedite the journey of the justice machine. The CPC
Amendment Act aims to do just this. It prescribes, for instance, time limits for the
serving of court summons and filing of statements and documents. Summons need not be
served by only a court messenger; a fax or an e-mail would do. There is a ceiling on
adjournments -- a party can claim up to three. Penalties have been imposed for filing
frivolous cases. It is difficult to disagree with any of these suggestions.
Bihar has had its circus; it's now time for bread. As a fresh government takes
charge of India's most impoverished state, it needs to deliver not merely governance --
but a miracle. Figures are often deceptive but even the most chauvinistic Bihari will find
it hard to explain why they betray his state. Thirty-six per cent of India's people live
below the poverty line; in Bihar the number rises to an astronomical 55 per cent. More
worrying than the facts are the intangibles. The rest of India seems a mindset removed
from Bihar, seeing it as the national basketcase, an in-house Bangladesh or Somalia. To
bridge this mental gulf is the real challenge facing Bihar's new rulers.