Review: Justice for the poor

REVIEW  

Justice for the Poor: Perspectives on Accelerating Access
Edited by Ayesha Kadwani Dass and Gita Honwana Wench; 
Oxford University Press, Rs. 895.


Blurb
The book clarifies conceptual issues relating to justice from the perspective of the weak and the marginalized. The essays in the volume address crucial questions: What are the most appropriate, practical, and effective strategies for securing access to justice for the poor? What are the means for evaluating justice programming form a results-based perspective? What level of interplay exists between poverty, good governance, and accountability in the realization of the Millennium Development Goals and in ensuring participation and non-discrimination in developmental decision-making? Covering major issues such as access to justice in plural legal systems, denial of women’s rights, public interest litigation, and the effects of globalization, the book examines judicial reform initiatives and critically appraises the institutionalization of strategies for ensuring access to justice by the poor. It offers practical recommendations for development and justice programming.

Making justice accessible to the poor The Hindu

Amartya Sen in his recent book An Idea of Justice commends the comparative method of discoursing on key questions of social justice. Even as one finds Sen's suggestion unexceptionable, its practical application is difficult because of the paucity of comparative material. To be precise, the Anglo-American outlook on key social questions occupies so much of the knowledge space that it virtually blocks every other perspective. This book breaks this embargo as it deliberates on the accessibility of justice to the poor through essays which specially dwell on the UNDP-supported experiments.

The 18 essays in this collection have been organised around five themes: access to justice, first, in the international context and then in plural legal systems; the link between public interest litigation and access to justice; the relationship between democracy, governance and justice programming; and the developments and obstacles encountered in the implementation of various regional initiatives. And the editors have provided an introduction to each of these segments, apart from the one for the entire group. This methodology has, apart from ensuring that no contribution suffered editorial neglect (because a succinct summary of each essay is given by the editors), rendered the work reader-friendly in the sense that one can easily zero in on the theme of one's interest. However, in opting for the descriptive, the editors have lost an opportunity to interlink the various contributions and meld them into a composite entity. As a consequence, the book remains just a collection of discrete essays.

Mumbai court orders probe into Shroff’s book

Despite an order from the Bombay High Court in his favour, trouble for Murzban Shroff, author of Breathless in Bombay, is far from over as a local court in Mumbai has now directed the city police’s crime branch to investigate if the book promotes communal disharmony.

The city police had lodged a case against Shroff for allegedly inciting communal disharmony by addressing Maharashtrians as ‘Ghaati’ (lowly) in his book.

Shroff had approached the High Court seeking to quash the FIR lodged against him. Justice S. C. Dharmadhikari had observed that Mr. Shroff was just an author and not a trouble maker.

The N. M. Joshi Marg police station had informed the High Court that “they did not find any reason to prosecute the author and there is nothing offensive in the said book.”

Full report here Hindu

Intolerant India

Free speech is increasingly under attack in the world's most populous democracy. The distribution of "Crescent Over the World," a book including contributions from Salman Rushdie, Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen, and a cartoon from the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. Mr. Narisetti is out on bail now; Mr. Laxmaiah remains in custody.

Indians boast of living in the world's most populous democracy, and rightly so. Regular elections and vigorous public debate are a rebuke to anyone who thinks that liberty can't flourish in a large, largely poor, culturally and linguistically diverse country. But in one area of life officials' concerns for keeping peace between various religious and ethnic groups is threatening a core freedom: speech.

In a little-noticed case on Feb. 26, police in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh arrested Macha Laxmaiah, an author who writes using the pseudonym Krantikar ("revolutionary"), and his distributors, including Innaiah Narisetti, president of the Hyderabad-based nonprofit Center for Inquiry, for "hurting the sentiments of Muslims." Their alleged crime? The distribution of Crescent Over the World, a book including contributions from Salman Rushdie, Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen, and a cartoon from the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. Mr. Narisetti is out on bail now; Mr. Laxmaiah remains in custody.

The works of Maqbool Fida Husain have been attacked by Hindu nationalists.

Then there are the continuing attacks on Ms. Nasreen and her supporters. Last week, masked men broke into the offices of Kannada Prabha, a local-language newspaper in the southern state of Karnataka. Its weekly magazine had published a piece allegedly written by Ms. Nasreen that criticized the burqa, the veil that many Muslim women wear. Muslim groups had protested the article—which was three years old and republished by the Kannada newspaper without her permission—and violence in two towns ensued, leading to two deaths and dozens arrested. Ms. Nasreen, who fled Bangladesh in 1994 after Muslim fundamentalists threatened her life, currently divides her time between Sweden and the United States, but says she wants to live in India. The government stands in the way, not permitting her to stay in Kolkata, where she prefers to live, and keeping her at an undisclosed location in New Delhi under security surveillance during her last extended stay in the country ostensibly for her own safety.

The sensitivity doesn't just concern Islam. Last week, India's foremost painter, Maqbool Fida Husain, who is 94, decided to give up Indian nationality and became a Qatari citizen. Mr. Husain is a Muslim, and among the many themes he has painted are a few paintings of Hindu deities in the nude. These works were completed and first displayed decades ago, but since the mid-1990s Hindu nationalists have campaigned against him, saying his work insulted their faith. They attacked galleries exhibiting his works, threatened him with violence, and filed lawsuits against him. The state attached some of his property and police officers issued arrest warrants against him, even as the Delhi High Court (and later the Supreme Court) ruled in his favor and officials publicly praised him. Unwilling to trust the state to protect him, Mr. Husain, who has lived abroad much of the past decade, gave up his nationality.

Full report here The Wall Street Journal