Voices on Law

  In India, wealth inequality has been sharply rising over the last three decades. In a recent report titled ‘Time To Care’ by Oxfam India, it was reported that the top 1% of the population holds more than four times the amount of wealth held by 95.3 crore people or the bottom 70% of the population. [1] This wealth inequality has become a systemic inequality, creeping into all the spheres of life including access to justice. The Supreme Court of India has regularly taken cognizance of this unequal access to justice. In the Hussainara Khatoon case, Bhagwati J. opined that the poor find the Indian legal and judicial system oppressive and heavily weighted against them. This has often fostered a feeling of frustration and despair among the poor and that they are helplessly in a position of inequality with the non-poor. [2] To add fuel to the fire, the contemporary state of the Indian judicial system is often characterized as a crippling mechanism on the verge of collapsing under it...