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April 01, 2008
Few things I learnt from Karti Chidambaram!
Recently I saw few hoardings and posters of Karti Chidambaram displayed all over Chennai. He had pictures of his father P Chidambaram (the present finance minister), Sonia Gandhi, and also Kamaraj to back his picture. From the poster I could take a wild guess that Karti is slowing getting into Indian politics. The dress he wore in the pic where similar to what his father wears in the parliament even today. Looking at the poster, my memories rushed back to year 2000, when I had just joined Sify.com!
My boss and me happen to meet Karti’s cousin, who had plans to start a portal on Indian law. I think it was myvakil.com, where in they wanted to tie up with Sify.com. The meeting was interesting, and Karti made it even more interesting.
As told to us, Karti was a law student from Cambridge University, and hated to take up law as his full time profession. Instead he was running a discotheque in Chennai. And he was happy about his decision.
He gave an instance, which really was hilarious. The judges in local courts in India hardly raise their head to see the witnesses. Once so happened that a person’s name was called, and he was absent that particular day. But the advocate wanted to close the case hence he pulled a stranger who was hovering around into the witness box, and won the case. The judge never realized it.
In India we have this habit of moving to the court for honest judgments. Whether it is land issue or a remote control issue, we move to the court or at least think about moving to the court to get judgment in a day or two. But in the process of court proceedings both the parties die of natural causes. For instance Bal Thackeray’s 1992 riot case is still pending in court, and I am sure the judgment will be passed only after he dies of natural reason.
There was an eye opening statistics, which said, if all the pending cases of India have to be cleared it will take 300 years from now!
Karti was clear in his approach. He said the last option for anyone should be to move to court to solve problems – whether personal or legal. Better to try to solve it outside the court. You talk, or pay, or compensate – but let moving to the court be the last resort!
I was still a bit skeptical about what Karti said, until I happen to have a sitting with my personal lawyer couple of years later. She said Indian legal system is pro-wrong doers, and against right doers. If someone files a case against you – you have million ways to escape, but if you file a case against someone – then be rest assured you will be wasting your time, energy and money!
May be Indian legal system was formatted so - to see to it that not a single innocent person gets punished in any case!
Posted by Kenni at April 1, 2008 07:50 AM
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