Judicial Systems of the Third World: the Case of India

This book is a rare and incisive analysis of the actual working of the judicial system of India by a person who has worked in it as an advocate and has observed it very closely at the national, state and local levels of Supreme Court, High Courts of Bombay and Delhi and District Courts of Bombay, Delhi and Amritsar. The unique quality of this book is that it is an empirical study based on the actual cases processed in various courts, the data collected by the author by a survey research questionnaires and personal interviews. The book examines the theoretical concepts of judicial activism in the light of the practical requirements of a people-friendly judicial system so as to serve the goals of the Constitution of India as embodied in the Preamble to the Constitution of India and in Part IV of the Constitution under the chapter heading of Directive Principles of State Policy. The author has made a case for several improvements in the working of the judicial system. He has provided raw data to show that the system has not changed over the past half a century and the common man has to contend with the same system as it existed prior to Independence when he was a slave of the British empire. The author has also indicated the method to improve the system based on the study made of the working of various jurisdictions in the United States. The author gives credit to the judiciary that it ensured that the Constitution of India has remained in tact generally and has not been torn to pieces as it has happened several times over in neighboring countries. But, the claim for judicial activism is however not deserving because by the judgements that have been generally hailed as activist in the medium have only rendered justice as it should have been actually done since the inception of the Constitution of India. In fact, the author finds that the Supreme Court of India and other courts have not played their role as assigned in the Constitution of India for several decades and t