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Journalism of Courage
Last Sunday was the first time in nearly twenty years of the Fifth Column’s existence that it did not appear. The reason for its absence was that I wrote a description of a morning spent in a Mumbai court that this newspaper’s legal department believes would have landed me in jail for contempt. ‘‘It’s not that what you’re saying is not true,’’ explained one of our lawyers, ‘‘it’s that the truth does not amount to a valid defense when it comes to contempt. Besides, you’re attacking the judges when the conditions you describe are really the fault of the government.’’
It was good advice. I spent last week investigating why our courtrooms are shabby and decrepit, why our courts have not yet discovered computers, why the English used in legal proceedings is so arcane as to be almost a forgotten language and why nothing is being done to speed up a justice system that the world mocks for having a backlog that will take more than 325 years to clear. And, I discovered that it is the fault of government and not the judges because, in our fair and wondrous land, there is no judicial autonomy. Judges have fought for it and lost because the executive likes the idea of a judiciary they can starve of funds when it starts to get too uppity.
First, a brief account of what I wrote last week. I received a summons to appear before the Court of the Metropolitan Magistrate of Bombay and the language of the summons so baffled me that if the policeman bringing it had not translated it into Hindi I would not have understood what I was supposed to do. The summons said, ‘‘Whereas on the 19th day of March 2004 you became surety for one Vishnu Kashinath Chavan of Bombay, that he should appear before this Court on the 24th day of March 2004 and should continue so to attend until otherwise directed by the Court and bound yourself in default thereof to forfeit the sum of Rs 5000 and whereas…’’
In simple English it would have said: please appear in court on the following date because the man you stood bail for failed to attend a hearing. Why do we not write our law in more modern language? Why do we not use Indian languages? Because our lawmakers spend so much time walking out of Parliament and State Legislatures they have not found time to revise our ancient legal procedures.
Other than commenting on the language of the summons I commented on the slowness of proceedings because a manual typewriter was being used to record them instead of a computer. I also expressed my pain at seeing a magnificent building like the Esplanade Court reduced to rack and ruin. ‘‘Beautiful arched doorways and carved eaves and moldings are so thick with dust you cannot see the details and wide, elegant verandahs are now crammed with Godrej cupboards so layered with paan spit that they look rust instead of grey. To get away from this yucky sight I moved towards a window and nearly threw up when I saw that its ledge was being used to dump waste food. A congealed mess of rice and dhal covered it completely.’’
On the cleanliness front perhaps the Judges can order their officers to be more vigilant and impose instant, hefty fines on paan-spitters and food throwers. The rest we can blame squarely on the Prime Minister and our Law Ministers. In the course of my investigations last week, I discovered that the Bombay High Court building is being repaired for the first time in its 165 years of existence. The Maharashtra government needs to be complimented for setting aside, for the first time in decades, Rs 35 crores for repairing the state’s courthouses and for modernising them. The citizens of Maharashtra are blessed because they may soon have computerised court proceedings and a new, improved justice system with facilities for dispute resolution by means other than judicial. Nasik and Baramati already have computerised courts.
The rest of us have to suffer until other chief ministers and the Prime Minister awake to the urgent need for judicial reform and autonomy. I discovered that Judges are so bound down by the Executive they cannot buy a piece of paper, or a fountain pen, without seeking the government’s permission. No exaggeration. I discovered that where we should have a hundred judges we make do with ten and that an American magistrate deals on average with a hundred cases while his Indian counterpart deals with 4,000.
Dr Manmohan Singh promised, in one of his first speeches after becoming Prime Minister, that administrative reform would be one of his government’s priorities. Nowhere is it required more than in the judiciary but we are unlikely to see it unless our lawmakers are forced to spend at least one session of Parliament discussing judicial reform. This is a suggestion I have borrowed from Bibek Debroy who has written volumes on the subject and who was the first person to tell me that it would take 325 years to deal with the backlog in Indian courts. That was nearly ten years ago and almost nothing has been done by our supposedly brilliant Law Ministers — Arun Jaitley comes instantly to mind — to improve the functioning of the justice system. With all the glib talk we hear these days about India being on the verge of becoming an economic superpower we forget that this will remain a foolish dream as long as we have courts that look as if they remain frozen in a hundred years of solitude.
Write to tavleensingh@expressindia.com
