Socio-Legal Research in India

SOCIO-LEGAL RESEARCH IN INDIA
A PROGRAMSCHRIFT*
Upendra Baxi '" '"
I The social setting for advanced legal research in India
1.1 TOO MUCH has been written on legal education and research in
India since independence, although there has been some respite after the
1972 University Grants Commission's Poona Seminar on Legal Education.
Law teachers revel in the elucidation of the objectives of legal education
and of the strategies for legal research. Good ideas on what ought to be
done abound. But concern with the factual substratum of legal education
and research is conspicuous by its absence. In the absence of such
concern, it is not surprising that all talk and some curricular innovation
in legal education have yielded so little in terms of better legal education
and sustained legal research.
1.2 The generally known though not articulated facts concerning
legal education are these. First, there has been a phenomenal quantitative
expansion of entrants to legal education. Second, the bulk of LL.B. and
LL.M. education is not whole-time but part-time. Third, the bulk of
LL.B. education is imparted by law colleges, with poor teaching and
library resources. Fourth, the number of university departments in law,
although on the increase, is comparatively smaller than in other social
science fields, and the law departments are generally low-priority items
for funding. Fifth, mass education in law has meant decline over control
of admissions, decline in standards of teaching and evaluation, and a
pervasive demoralization of full-time law teachers, whose number is still
smaller than that of part-time law teachers. Sixth, the expansion of legal
education has brought with it the adoption of regional languages as media
of instruction and examination in the LL.B. and even LL.M. level.
1.3 All this has led to an overall decline of the-status of law teaching
and law teachers within the university community and the wider society.
'" Originally published as an occasional monograph in 1975 by the Indian Council

of Social Science Research, New Delhi. The permission of the author to reprint is
gratefullyacknowledged.
*'" Former Vice-Chancellor, South Gujarat University, Surat and University of
Delhi, Delhi.
SOCIO-LEGAL RESEARCH IN INDIA 645
This aggravates further the demoralization within the law teaching

fraternity. The search for status within the academic community has,
not paradoxically, led law teachers to assert their identity through
continuing public discussions of the objectives, styles and innovations in
legal education. It is, perhaps, true to say that no academic community
in India has yielded such a profusion of writings on the desirable reforms
in education in its special sphere.
1.4 This then is the brief prologue to the social setting of legal
education in India. It is in this setting that the paradox of retarded legal
research in a country which offers vast and exacting vistas for law/
society research has to be understood. To understand, explain, and
perhaps remedy this fact, we have to appreciate at the outset conditions
necessary for efflorescence of such research. These are, roughly: (i) the
availability of time for such research, (ii) the problem of intellectual
equipment, (iii) "role" perception, (iv) facilities-including funding and
institutional auspices-for research, (v) the lack of infrastructure scholarly
research, and (vi) the prospects of interdisciplinary collaboration.
1.5 The "Time" Factor: Although law is a postgraduate course, and
the curricula ofsome ofthe Indian law schools are excitingly experimental,
the distinct emphasis in law teaching is on the lawyer's law understood
as hornbook or blackletter law. This is in itself paradoxical, given the
hypothesis (for which there is considerable support) that most entrants
to law schools do not seriously contemplate joining legal profession. Be
that as it may, exposition of legal materials (by whatever method) takes
most of the classroom time and hopefully substantial time by way of
class preparation.
1.6 A handful of law teachers allocate a slice of available surplus
time to occasional writing of case-comments and papers. A substantial
portion of the surplus time is, however, devoted to setting and evaluating
examination papers. This latter is seen to be a worthwhile source of
supplementary income, the salaries being not too generous, and on some
estimates, rather inadequate. The very same time-money equation leads
some law teachers to produce treatises (in English and other regional
languages) on substantive law oriented to the student and professional
markets. The time left for non-lucrative intellectual pursuits-socio-Iegal
research being one-is thus very minimal.
1.7 The Problem of Intellectual Equipment: In a semi-professional
tradition of law teaching, ongoing critical examination of the social
relevance of law and its processes inside and outside the classroom
becomes difficult. In any event, such an exercise demands a sure
grounding in jurisprudence-the step-child of the common law culture
and oflegal curricula in the Indian universities. Jurisprudence, insightfully
described as the "lawyer's extraversion", mainly consists of the logical
analysis of legal conceptions, the theorising on individual and social
646 LEGAL RESEARCH AND METHODOLOGY
justice, and the study of the complex interaction between legal system
on the one hand and social and cultural system on the other. Unfortunately,
a solitary course in jurisprudence in the Indian law schools usually
degenerates in a half baked exposition of history of Western ideas,
whose relevance to the Indian context is only remotely perceived. At
best, preoccupation with analytical jurisprudence dominates.
1.8 The lack of adequate grounding in jurisprudence is, we suspect.
the principal factor responsible for lack of perception of the intimate
relation between the legal, social and cultural systems. In the United
States, the realists' assault on "doing" jurisprudence coupled with Roscoe
Pound's untiring reiteration of sociological jurisprudence has been the
mainspring of legal sociology, indeed to the extent that readers in legal
Sociology, scarcely pause to acknowledge their debt to them. The mood,
the method, and the message of realist thinking have become a part of
the milieu of legal thought and research, and this milieu has in tum
substantialty affected the development of interdisciplinary exchanges
between law on the one hand and social sciences on the other. So long
as Indian law teachers regard jurisprudence as a subject which they can
dispense with until they have to teach it occasionally, the shortfalls in
intellectual equipment for law-society or law-development research are
unlikely to be remedied.
1.9 The Role Perception : While there has been much animated
discussion in India amongst the law teachers as to their law status within
the community of law men and community, generally, there exists very
little self-conscious articulation concerning the role of law teachers in
Indian society. Some have thus complained that law teachers rank.
lowest in the hierarchy of esteem comprising judges, retired judges, law
ministers and secretaries, senior lawyers and practitioners with some
experience. They point, and not without justification, to the fact that
despite a constitutional provision enabling elevation of a jurist to the
Supreme Court, no such elevation has taken place. They also stress that,
in the common law culture which the Indian judiciary has inherited, the
judges do not publicly (in their judgements) acknowledge the contribution
that any living Indian scholar may have made to the development of the
law. They also point to the low priority given to legal education and the
initial disassociation of law from social sciences by a national funding
agency for social science research.
1.10 At the same time, judges and governmental policy-makers
assign increasingly greater role-responsibilities to law teachers. The law
teachers are supposed to inculcate a degree of legal craftsmanship in
students; to help internalization of the notion of the rule of law, to
inculcate a critical posture towards the role of law in society and to help
realize the potential of law as a tool of "social engineering". The law
teachers in India themselves are slowly succumbing to this role-rhetoric.
1.11. But the inner definition of law teachers' role is not easy to
ascertain without an empirical study, even if one may derive an external
role definition from the above-mentioned platitudinous exhortations.
From my personal knowledge, which is no substitute for proper research.
I set below some self-perceptions of the role of law teachers in India :
(i) A group of law teachers feels that the primary role obligation
of an academic lawyer is to renovate and restructure Indian
legal education. Institution-building and curricular innovation
are cardinal components of this obligation. Some of these are
exceptionally able men with a high scholarly potential. Their
dedication to what they think is their primary obligation has
resulted in a massive "brain drain" from specialized legal research.
(ii) Some law teachers feel (and the number is substantial) that
their primary vocation is to teach well, to be good teachers.
This entails learning from experience in the art of communication
and empathising with students. Seriously pursued, their
conception of role-obligation leaves little time and inclination
for serious and sustained legal research.
(iii) A section of law teachers includes those who believe that good
teaching entails research and writing effort. Teachers who so
believe combine teaching with research by writing treatises and
papers in the field of their teaching.
(iv) There are a few law teachers who feel their primary role-
obligation is to specialize in one subject-area, and to contribute
substantially to scholarly literature in their subjects over time.
(v) A handful of law teachers exposed to overseas influence,
especially American law schools and scholarship, believe their
role requires pedagogic innovation as well as off beat. non-
traditional legal writing.
1.12 Legal research and writing remain, however, secondary activities.
The obligation to advance the state of knowledge in particular fields, by
continuing communication of ideas and analyses through articles.
monographs and treatises does not seem to figure preeminently in, the
apperceived role obligations. This factor in turn is clearly supported by
the lack of many viable scholarly law journals in India and the problems
of quality control and competence plaguing such publications.
1.13 Research Facilities: The level of research facilities available to
a law teacher in India is not conducive to sustained research. The lack
of role-facilities generates confusion, conflict as well as ambivalence
towards primary role-obligation calling for sustained attempts to contribute
to knowledge in the field. A law teacher (unless he be a Dean or Head
of the University Department or a Principal of a Law College) gets no
typing and duplicating assistance. Very few know how to type. and of
these not many can afford a typewriter. Availing the services of a
professional typist remains for most of them a luxury. Lack of xerox
facilities limits severely the library facilities-especiaIly for journals and
books not readily available locally. Holdings of books and journals vary
from one law school to another; not too many libraries can afford
budgets to meet the demands of advanced legal research.
1.14 Institutional auspices for serious research are available. but not
too readily. The Indian Council of Social Science Research holds a major
potential on this count; the Indian Law Institute had some programmes
to assist scholars from outside Delhi to subsidize advanced research but
these have now been abandoned." Its library is the best in India and
perhaps in Asia, but lacks xeroxing facilitiesv" and is of limited use to
those outside Delhi. The Law-Society Centre of the Institute of
Parliamentary and Constitutional Studies offered a ray of hope for the
provision of data banks, orientation workshops, specialist seminars. and
subsidies for individual research. The Centre's activities are, however.
limited to undertaking occasional research projects. There is as yet no
centre for advanced legal studies, though the University Grants
Commission has approved such centres in other disciplines.
1.15 Lack ofInfra-structure Scholarly Research: By "Infrastructure"
legal research, we mean scholarly analyses and 'critiques of substantive
or "straight law" materials. Most treatises on substantive law are prepared
by practitioners and retired judges. Some of these are of exceptionally
high quality and have become landmarks in common law literature. Even
these, however, remain lengthy expositions of the state of law,
occasionally providing critical commentation. The type of contemplative
research that a law scholar can provide is for most part missing.
Scholarly reworking of the straight law materials-by way of systematic.
comparative policy analyses-is imperative. There is virtually no field in
which an Indian law teacher cannot today contribute as a pioneer.
1.16 Unfortunately, some bright young law teachers, exposed
unevenly to research traditions overseas specially in the United States)
are in a mood of going empirical, and denigrate what they call
"traditional" legal research. But in the present opinion, law-society
research cannot thrive on a weak infra-structure base of doctrinal type
analyses of the authoritative legal materials. Legal and policy studies of
the state oflaw provide not merely an assurance of sound understanding.
but may also hold promise of needed starting-points for sociological
research in India.
The programme has been revised, but for the present it is in abeyance due to lack
of funding. Editors.
.. The xeroxing facilities have now been made available. Edlton.
1.17 Prospects for Interdisciplinary Collaboration : Theoretical and

empirical research in social sciences cognate to the law is much more
advanced. This fact introduces a degree of disparity, among academic
lawyers and social scientists generally. The preoccupation or the inertia
of the Indian law teachers has generally also kept them ignorant of the
law-relevant social science materials (aside perhaps in criminology).
1.18 Academic lawyers have frequently been exhorted by their own
brethren as also by social scientists to adopt an interdisciplinary approach.
These exhortations have mostly been unaccompanied by examples of
how this is to be done. One result is the misapprehension that the
academic lawyers are asked to abdicate their own specializations, and
indulge in some kind of esoteric neo-specialization. This, of course, is
due simply to the lack of effective communication.
1.19 But it remains true that the exhortations to adopt an interdiscipli-
nary approach have only been addressed to the academic lawyers merely.
No serious attempts have been made by other social scientists to understand
the discipline and the craft of the law. Nor is there evidence, on the part
of social scientists generally, of much understanding of the law and its
processes as a structural property of the social system. Social scientists
ought to acquire an understanding of sociological jurisprudence just as
academic lawyers must ground themselves in concepts and methods of
sociology, economics and political science. Law, as a normative and
behavioral reality, is pervasive in society. This was in fact most clearly
recognized by the founders of modem sociology like Durkheim, Weber
and Marx. Their conceptual elaborations gave some kind of primacy to
law as a social variable; but unfortunately, since the early 20s, a gradual
disassociation between law and sociology has occurred, leaving criminology
as the only meeting ground between the academic lawyers and sociolo-
gists. In the United States and some continental European countries, we
now witness the emergence of an autonomous discipline called the sociology
of law. Effective emergence of such a discipline of vital policy relevance
in developing countries, is possible only within a framework of a truly
interdisciplinary communication between lawyers and social scientists,
each making special efforts to understand the substantive domains of the
other. The ICSSR is fortunately in a strategic position to influence such
a salutary development. This, it can do, aside from implementing some of
the suggestions made herein, by requiring of all social science research
proposals sponsored or approved by it an optimal advertence to law as a
social variable.
II The Role of ICSSR in the Emergence of
Sodo-Legal Research
2.1 The travails of advanced legal research are distinctive but not
atypical. The Report of the Indian Council of Social Science Research
Review Committee (1973) also speaks of the state of art In social

sciences in the following terms :
Much of the current research effort has no relevance to contem-
porary social and national problems and suffers besides from
lack of rigour in its analysis of phenomena and synthesis of
facts. It is largely oriented to micro-level research ... It is not yet
emancipated from its tutelage of western theories and has failed
to develop research tools, designs and models of its own
appropriate to the Indian situation. Multi-disciplinary and inter-
disciplinary research is yet rare. A most encouraging feature,
however, is that...the community of Indian social scientists is
alive to these defects. (Report, 1973 : 62)
This entire set of observations is, mutatis mutandis. applicable to the
state of juristic research in India, whose "sombre" side has been the
main expository concern to us in the first section of this paper. In this
overall situation, juristic research must also be the beneficiary of the
efforts to transform the social science research landscape. However, it
needs stressing that juristic research needs for the optimal development
of its present potential somewhat special and sustained attention. This is
because of a long period of "benign neglect" of legal education and
research in India. The following comparisons must also reinforce the
point:
2.2 The total number of university law teachers in India is 435 as
against 698 university teachers in Economics, 298 in Psychology, 295
in Geography; 243 in Sociology. The. "potential social science manpower"
constituted by postgraduate and Ph.D. students in 14 social fields was
respectively 42,479 and 2,153 in the year 1959-60. The corresponding
figure for postgraduateLl.M. students was 1,278 and Ph.D. enrolments
was 126 (which number would also include substantial numbers of
teacher-candidates). The 'total number of national and regional:
professional associations in social sciences is 60; of these the three
largest are Geography (10), Economics (7) and Anthtopology (8):
Compared to this, there are only six professional associations of which
three are national. Of the 659 journals dealing with 15 social science
disciplines no discipline (as in 1969) has less than 14 journals to its
credit, and most reach a figure of more than 20 journals. On the other
hand, the number of academic legal journals in India is only 7; and of
these three are in the specialized sphere of international law and relations.
As against so many centres of advanced studies in social sciences, law
has none.*
Though the given figures present the position of 1970s the relative status is still
the same. Editors.
2.3 The present status of law and legal research is of course

aggravated by the comprehensive neglect by social scientists of the
law's multiplex, and even pervasive, role in the maintenance of social
order and promotion of social change. This cognitive neglect poses an
imponderable for the sociology of social sciences in India. This is a
theme we have already touched upon (see para 1.18 supra) and to which
we will need to return when contextual exigencies so require. But a few
general observations on the theme are warranted here.
2.4 We must thus note that the belated recognition of legal studies
as social scientific by the ICSSR (which of course, is a major breakthrough
in the understanding 'of legal processes at a national research planning
level) has, still, however, to yield fruits at the level of everyday social
scientific consciousness. The Report of the Review Committee for the
ICSSR; which seeks to provide a retrospect and a prospect of the status
of social science research in India, provides notable testimony of this
fact. It has altogether overlooked the inter-connectedness of legal research
with social science research ! The contrasts we have drawn in paragraph
2.2 between the comparatively better position of social sciences depends
for its statistics on the data in the Report of the Review Committee; the
comparative profile of the state of legal research had, however, to be put
together by the present author!
2.5 The absence of any reference to sustained legal research, and its
relevance to theoretical and empirical socio-scientific research, becomes
aggravatingly puzzling when one looks at the key priority areas formulated
for ICSSR planning. These areas include poverty, scheduled castes and
tribes; social unrest and violence; public services and public policy; and
the "process of development" (Report on Social Sciences in India, 1973:
126-28). While the conclusions and recommendations refer to economics,
political science, public administration and management, sociology,
psychology, geography research, one does not find even a cursory
reference to legal research ! It does not even stand identified among "the
weaker social sciences" (Report, 1973, pp. 5-6). International Relations
features as social-scientific field; but not International Law! Even if the
state of art in juristic research was non-existent (which it is not) or
embarrassingly poor (which also it is not), policy planning for socially
relevant research must surely betray a very limited understanding of
"social relevance when it altogether fails to take note of law and legal
research.
2.6 This criticism of the Report is not meant to be a polemical attack
from one who is in the midst of the law teaching fraternity. Rather, the
criticism is intended to highlight the fact that despite the insistence on
interdisciplinary approaches, social scientists themselves have yet to
develop what we call a "community of scientific concern." It augers well
for the emergence of such a community that while adopting some of the
Review Committee's priority areas for sponsored research programmes,

the ICSSR added to it the area "law and social change" which did not
find a place in the Committee's recommended list of 12 areas. (See
Decisions of the ICSSR ... 1974 : 17).
2.7 The Report only happens to be the latest instance of an ongoing
and perhaps deeply entrenched trend of indifference to law and legal
research among social scientists generally. A good example of this trend
is provided by a series of land reform studies by economists, without the
minimal participation by academic lawyers and even minimal advertence
to jurisprudential literature. Naturally, many shortcomings in their under-
standing of the nature of the legal system and of legal processes have
retarded or distorted the pursuit of scientific tasks at hand. Thus, very
often the legislative intention in agrarian reform measures is identified
with preferred economic objectives, instead of being garnered from the
text and the structure of the statute. The complexities surrounding the
determination oflegislative intention and purpose, familiar to jurisprudents
seem not to be appreciated at all. Again, most, if not all the studies, fail
to distinguish between evaluation of specific laws on the one hand and
of the legal system, of which they form a part, on the other. Nor are the
levels of autonomy and of intra-systemic connections between legal
system and major social systems borne in mind. Much less is there any
advertence to questions of method and concept concerning measurement
oflegal impact, sufficiently well developed in contemporary jurisprudential
literature (Baxi, 1974).
2.8 It would be pointless to multiply instances of this kind. Such
instances are not unfamiliar in the relationship between jurisprudence
and social sciences in the English-speaking world. Julius Stone has noted
a "striking example of the sacrifice of mutual benefit by... lack of
communication between social scientists and jurists and jurisprudents in
Talcott Parsons' treatment of the family and in particular the parent-
child relations". Stone is constrained to note that at "no point in his study
does Parsons refer to the fact that at the Law School of his own
university, Sheldon and Eleanor Glueck had published two years before
(in 1950) empirically based conclusions which confirmed his own rather
deductively based hypothesis" (Stone, 1966 : 24-26). One can perhaps
learn from experience.
2.9 Suffice it to say that one of the prerequisites of interdisciplinary
research is a community of scientific concern. To develop a sharing of
mutual concerns, which only can translate into reality the high ideal of
socially relevant policy-oriented research, the ICSSR needs to bring
social scientists together more often for an effective dialogue on specific
themes. This may be done through metropolitan, regional, national
colloquia, symposia, seminars and workshops. Broad theoretical themes
such as law and social change need to be eschewed at this juncture;
SOCIa-LEGAL RESEARCH IN INDIA 653
rather specific themes from within the key priority areas identified by the
Report, or adopted by the Council (See the ICSSR on the Recommendations
of its Review Committee... 1974 ; 17-18) are to be preferred. The
emphasis of these endeavours must be on promoting effective scientific
communication on substantive themes on a multidisciplinary basis, which
will have a dual advantage of breaking the shackles of unidisciplinarism
and eventually fostering interdisciplinarism.
2.10 It is out of interchange of ideas, perspectives, and methods that
the fellowship of learning will arise. Fellowship of learning begins with
the overcoming of intellectual and social distances between and among
the social science specialists. New cognitive styles will emerge within
and among disciplines. The academic lawyer, for example, will no longer
talk about the "rule of law" merely in terms of the citizens' rights and
limitations of state power or in those of processual justice before the
courts and tribunals. He will also begin to perceive that ethnographic
accounts of indigenous dispute settlement processes offer disturbingly
alternate conceptual and societal paths to the attainment of the basic
values of "the rule of law". By the same token, the anthropologist will
learn to explore more deeply the mechanisms and layers of indigenous
justice in the light of the elaborate models of the formal legal system's
ways of administering justice (See Baxi, 1974) . He may also begin to
appreciate, too, that dispute institutions are as worthy of detailed studies
which he otherwise reserves to kinship, religion, caste, status or power.
This is only one illustration of possible emergence of new cognitive
styles but surely it is unnecessary to labour the theme further. It is
obvious also that juxtaposition of these matters will enable a richer grasp
of social reality through a reciprocal, ongoing expansion of cognitive
concerns. A base for the fellowship of social learning would already
have been firmly laid by a series ofpreliminary multidisciplinary exposures
advocated in the preceding paragraph. This second development will be
a more or less spontaneous outcome of the attainment of a community
of scientific concern.
2.11 Attainment of the community of scientific concern and a
fellowship of social science learning will be accelerated by planned
measures of institutional linkages and collaboration. There is need for
intra-campus and inter-campus linkages between the law and other
social science faculties. The ICSSR has already before it the unanimous
resolution of its seminar on Law and Social Change (Delhi, 1973) urging
the Council to promote on an organized basis short-term "sojourns" by
social sciences teachers in law faculties and vice versa. Social sciences
curricula also need to accommodate orientation courses or specialist
seminars in legal sociology, conflict resolution through official and non-
official legal systems, legal system and economic growth, law, power,
and civil disobedience and other cognate interdisciplinary areas. Efforts
should also be made to establish, within a framework of an agenda of

socio-legal research, close and working ties with such professional
research orgnizations as are available in the field of law, especially the
Indian Law Institute.
2.12 Additionally, the ICSSR should consider in what ways the
potential of, and for, juristic research can be enhanced in formulating
policies aimed at developing "close working relations" with research and
policy formulation agencies (See the Decisions of' the ICSSR... 1974 :
18-22). The fact that there are hardly any linkages between the law
faculties on the one hand and institutions such as the Planning
Commission, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, Indian
Council of Agricultural Research on the other once again betrays a
myopic conception ofrelevance oflaw and legal research in the elucidation
and implementation of the major national tasks and goals. Juristic talent
in India must be harnessed to doing its share in the pre-legislative tasks
of policy enunciation.
2.13 The community of academic lawyers in India is in need of
restoration of its rightful status and role in the process of national
development. What is needed is a catalytic intervention by a national
agency like the ICSSR to reverse the attlmia suffered by this community
over decades, partly through its collective shortcomings but partly also
through continuing and comprehensive indifference by social scientific
community to law and legal research, and educational policy planning
which has been inhospitable to imaginative experimentation in legal
studies.
2.14 Renaissance of juristic thought and research is bound to occur
once law and legal processes are related meaningfully to the tasks of
national and social development. The ICSSR's sponsored research
programme, accompanied by some action on the lines suggested in the
preceding paragraphs, should go a long way in assisting the regeneration
of legal studies as a social scientific discipline, of vital relevance to a
nation pursuing democratic goals in an economy of scarcity.
III Objectives and Strategies of the Sponsored
Research Programme (SRP)
3.1 The French sociological jurist Maurice Hariou observed (using
"sociology" in a generic sense) that "too little sociology leads away from
law; but much sociology leads back to it' : And Georges Gurvitch rightly
supplemented this statement by observing that "a little law leads away
from sociology but much law leads back to it "(Gurvitch, 1947 : 2). The
SRP must avoid only one of the extremes: it must avoid "little law" and
"little sociology"! In other words, the SRP in its very conception must
address itself to academic lawyers and social scientists, not just one to
the exclusion (partial or total) of the other.
3.2 Accordingly, it is to be emphasized at the outset that the

Advisory Committee, if any, set up to process the suggestions made
herein (or other suggestions for research) must be a committee of
academic lawyers and social scientists. Only then would the aspirations
articulated so far have a reasonable future.
3.3 The SRP's objectives and strategies must be realistic. The
commitments of juristic research are unidisciplinary; those of social
science research perhaps a little less so. The SRP, in this situation, must
be oriented to generate inter-disciplinary consciousness. Legal research,
like social research, is interested in social facts; but the academic lawyer
is, at a pinch, more concerned with norms as social facts. He is also,
therefore; specially endowed in skills of rigorous analysis through the
use, mainly; of "archival" data. The SRP should seek to extend the
domain of the academic lawyer's social facts and to add to the stock of
his useful skills, the skils of social scientific analysis, particularly those
of scientific observation, opinion analysis, and data-collection. By the
same token, social scientists should be encouraged through SRP to have
a little greater regard for the normative facts of law.
3.4 The overall priority areas adopted by the ICSSR are as follows:
( I) poverty and unemployment; (2) scheduled castes and tribes; (3) law
and social change; (4) Muslims; (5) government systems and development:
(6) education; (7) regional and inter-regional planning; (8) social unrest
and violence; (9) studies in urbanization; (10) area studies on Asia; (11)
efficiency of investment; (12) political systems and processes; (13)
social development; (14) droughts; and (15) aspects of science and
technology. (lCSSR Decisions on Recomendations, 1974: 17). The
conspectus of research areas in this paper is oriented to some of these
priority areas.
3.5 Some of the priority areas, of course, are indeterminate, and
some of them appear intractable (e.g. "law and social change"). This is,
of course, as it should be at the initial stage of the fixation or research
priorities but all this carries a cost. The cost is that the outlines of SRP
in any field may seem to diverge from (or conform too much to)
whatever any specialist may think should be minimally or optimally
covered. We think it best to indicate briefly the research areas elaborated
in the rest of this paper, together with an indication of some general
considerations supporting them.
3.6 First, we have felt that a sociological understanding of the
official and non-official legal systems of the society is essential for
almost all the priority areas adopted by the lCSSR. Attempts to gain such
an understanding are in themselves valuable for creating a nucleant
interdisciplinary community for sociological research. Also, attempts at
social economic "development" through planned change inescapably
involve reliance on the official or formal legal systems. Their reach,
institutional capacities and biases are, therefore, important general themes

requiring investigation as a matter of basic priority. In as much as the
reach of the official or formal legal systems is, in fact, limited or
complemented (as the case may be) by informal (non-state) legal (social
control) systems, research attention to these also commands a basic
priority. Functionally also, this research arena provides "much law" for
social scientists and "much sociology" for academic lawyers and is ideal
in terms of research manpower training as the points of "take off' for
the research are not arcane, as will be seen later, for either social
scientists or lawyers.
3.7 Our second major area of proposed research promotion is the
study of effectiveness of laws which again is highly conducive to
immediate interdisciplinary ventures. And the particular substantive fields
preferred for research there also have the advantage of covering some
principal priority areas adopted by the ICSSR-in particular, law and
poverty-conditions and compensatory discrimination policies for scheduled
castes and tribes.
3.8 The third and the last research promotion domain relates broadly
to law and social change, but, more specifically to alienation, anomie,
violence, legitimacy and the rule of law. In a way, we also emphasize
study of movements of social change through the law by recourse to
"direct action" or civil disobedience.
3.9 The foregoing general indication cannot foreshadow adequately
the number of directions of specific enquiries stressed by us or their
rather wideranging linkages with many of the adopted priority areas for
SRP. The amount of work required or entailed in these areas is very
substantial indeed compared with the relatively modest range of areas
delineated generally so far. But the basic objective of the present author
is to enable the emergence of areas of relatively easily shared concern
between academic lawyers and other social scientists in a manner that
will necessarily entail transmission of knowledge, perspectives, skills
and cognitive styles across disciplines. Once this happens, widening of
the interdisciplinary terrain will, it is hoped, follow more or less
spontaneously.
IV The "Mapping" of the Legal Systems
4.1 Legal systems can be conceptualized in three principal ways.

First, a legal system can be conceived merely as an aggregate of legal
norms, as a sum of its parts. In this conception, the typical questions
are: what makes a system out of a vast and heterogeneous mass of
normative materials? By what concepts and criteria can we identify the
existence of a legal system? How is the unity of the system to be
established ? Second, legal systems can be conceived as systems of
social behaviour, ofroles, statutes, and institutions, as involving patterned

interactions between the makers, interpreters, breakers, enforcers, and
compliers of the norms oflaw. Third,legal systems may be equated with
social control system, involving differential bases of social authority and
power, different nonnative requirements and sanctions, and distinctive
institutional complexes. The distinction here is among social control
systems supported and/or maintained under the auspices of the state and
those under the auspices of non-state groups or associations. Thus,
there abound in India a number of indigenous legal systems operating at
the "village" or region level with customary norms often in sharp conflict
with the nationally proclaimed legal policies and values, often with
complementary legal cutlures.
4.2 Thus, we have three dimensions or aspects of legal system :
first, legal system as a nonnative/cultural system; second, legal system
as a social system and the third, related out distinct from the second,
legal system as a congeries of formal/national legal systems under the
state auspices and of informal/regional systems under non-state auspices.
The traditional division of labour pattern reveals that the first is primarily
the domain of academic lawyers; the seocnd, the domain of sociologists
and the thrid that of anthropologists but only so far as it concerns the
informal legal systems. The interaction, within the third category wholly
left unattended. The emergence, of an autonomous discipline of legal
sociology is now slowly transforming this diverse pattern of division of
social scientific labour into some sort of inchoate unitarian discipline.
4.3 In India, however, no clear division of social scientific labour
has emerged; much less emergent of course is any kind of hybrid
discipline as sociology of law. The only exceptions to this observation
are, however, provided by the academic lawyers who have cultivated the
normative domain of the law and a few anthropologists who have
casually addressed themselves to dispute-settlement in the indigenous
contexts (See for review Das, 1973; Baxi, 1973; Baxi )974).
4.4 The Indian academic lawyer operates only at the cybernetic
control point of the nonnative legal system: namely, the appellate court
system. No doubt, that system reveals the key points of stress and strain
caused mainly by the need to accommodate within a broad and stable
normative/cultural framework, the impulses for, and resistance to,
normative change and growth. And undoubtedly too the nonnative
output of that system can be attributed a degree of impact on the entire
nonnative/cultural system of law. On the other hand, however, the
appellate court-system is only the tip of the iceberg of the formallegal
system; and the nonnative output of this system is' merely a dot on the
tip of this iceberg.
4.5 Accordingly, a rational comprehension of the role of legal
systems in social stability and growth demands a mare wide-ranging
awareness of law as a social system. This must be the first major point
of departure for any programme of socio-legal research in India, We
proposed to characterize this imperative need through the expression
"the mapping of the legal systems" in India. "Mapping" exercises, in a
broad sense involve an examination of the spread of the "presence" and
impact of legal systems through close studies of their institutions.
4.6 The exercise of mapping calls initially for adoption of new set
of concerns, cognate to the existing ones. Thus, even within the confines
of the traditional academic lawyer's concerns, we need to transfer our
research energies from what he traditionally calls precedent in a case to
trends in decisions (judicial and legislative); from single outcomes to the
processes and patterns of decision-making. But this by itself would not
liberate the academic lawyer from his common-law-cultural obsession
with the appellate court-system. H6 would, in addition, have to move
from the cognitive out-put of legal agencies to their social impact; from
norms of law to the institutional settings and processes of the norm-
creating agencies ; from law reports and digests in the library to that
"law-stuff" in court rooms, legislative, bureaucratic and lawyer's
chambers and to the inter-subjectivities of the beneficiaries and the
victims of the administration of justice.
4.7 The tasks of "mapping" legal systems can be formulated with
reference to the Formal Legal System(s) (FLS) and to the Informal
Control System (s) (ICS). We begin with the FLS.
V "Mapping" of Formal Legal Systems
5.1 The FLS, in its most relevant aspects for the practising and
academic lawyer, consists primarily of adjudicatory and law-enforcing
(police and correctional services) agencies. The adjudicative institutions
encompass not only the court-system but also, ofnecessity, administrative
bodies which are "tribunals" or "quasi judicial", which increasingly
determine the rights and obligations of individuals. The practitioner of
law grasps through experience of individual litigious situations, by way
of "recipe knowledge", the normative as well as behavioral realities of
these aspects of the FLS; the academic lawyer grasps mostly the
normative reality-rules, principles, doctrines, policies, values. The
practitioner is also a partner in renovation and preservation of the
normative and behavioral reality ofthese aspects ofthe FLS; the academic
usually awaits the labours of adjudicators and lawyers before he wields
his systematizing and evaluative axe. His labours do contribute to the
rational development of law; the academician is more or less in a position
of a "remote controller" of the normative reality of law.
5.2 In its sociological comprehension, the FLS is, of course, more
than adjudicatory and enforcement agencies. In this conception, the FLS
encompasses all institutions of society under the auspices of the state,

which are oriented to and engaged in the tasks of maintaining "social
control" and of promoting planned or spontaneous social change through
the techniques of law-making, law-interpretation and law-enforcement.
This conception will bring into the range of concern the legislative
institutions, local self government units, Panchayats and Nyaya
Panchayats, institutions of agrarian and economic development, etc. In
this conception, two other mediating institutional systems, not directly
under state auspices, will also be included. They are : legal profession
and legal education. In this conception, the focus would be on the social
context of their organization and functioning of the institutions of the
FLS, the patterns of systemic interdependence and functional "criss-
crossing" between and among them, assessment of their capabilities to
meet their objectives and of their contributions, and relevance, to the
maintenance of social organization in terms of social stability, growth,
change and social justice.
S.3 The difficulty lies not in the articulation of this wider sociological
comprehension of the social systems of law ; but in transmitting it in
terms of "everyday" working consciousness of the academic lawyers
and social scientists. This would occur, of course, only when some
amount of interdisciplinary work becomes widely diffused. The following
delineation of research areas may by itself be of some use in this
direction.
S.4 The first job towards the sociological comprehension of the FLS
is the ascertainment of the profiles of its presence; as indicated by the
satistical presence of its agencies and agents in each relevant region. The
latter may be designated as "law" regions wherein the "presence" of FLS
can be meaningfully related to the available census information and
which can be classified on a rural-urban continuum with as much
reference as possible to the distinctive demographic, ecological, cultural
and socioeconomic features of a region. The spread, and the pattern of
spread, of the FLS can be initially understood even by a "headcount" of
judges, police and correctional officials, personnel of adjudicative
institutions of states other than courts, correctional and custodial
institutions, etc.
S.S More collation of such information may seem pointless but it is
not. Social demography of the FLS would enable us to perceive important
variations in different law-regions in the country. Disparities in investment
in the institutions of FLS may strikingly emerge. Some law-regions may
tum out to have a higher ratio of say, practitioners or judges or police
and correctional staff relative to its population. We may be able thus to
identify the "advanced" and "backward" law-regions in the country; the
demography of FLS may itself provide sets of social indicators for social
scientific study. Moreover, we may also be enabled to perceive
differentials, within each law-region, of the "presence" of the FLS : it

would be interesting to find patterns of dispersal of the institutional
resources of the FLS in rural, urban, and metropolitan areas within each
law-region.
5.6 Social demographic studies of FLS, furthermore, provide crucial
background data for scientific understanding and assessment of the
contexts of the emergence, provenance and viability of complementary
or antithetical indigenous or informal legal (social control) systems.
Social development in the light of the constitutionally proclaimed goals
favours a set of adjudicative and societal values. From this standpoint
informal control systems, in so far as they espouse radically different
values, could be said to present an antithetical social and jural order; and
may be seen to present limits to the pursuit of social development
envisaged by the Constitution.
5.7 A further advantage of this type of data collection would be the
furnishing of a number of scientific starting-points and control-points,
for more advanced legal research. Thus, for example, today our
assessments of effectiveness of laws or of law-enforcement processes
are based on infirm intuitive or partial commonsense perceptions of the
basic constitutive facts ofthe FLS. This is true not just for the academician
but also for the legislator and policy-planner generally. Thus, well-
known specialists in criminal law would be hard put to answer simple
questions on the number and locations, within their own region of
custodial, correctional and police institutions and the size of their
personnel. Thus, also, one hears of "delays" in the administration of
criminal justice, of investigatory processes. But these complaints are
devoid of any factual grasp of the relevant manpower in judiciary or
police. Programmes of legal aid are continuously commended at a
national or regional scale but without any assessment of the patterns of
quantitative dispersal oflegal practitioners among and within law-regions.
The national expert committee on Legal Aid (Govt. of India 1973), in the
useful report, refers to the "human resources of the Bar" for legal aid
work without at any stage examining in some, even rough, quantitative
terms the pattern of the dispersal of the legal profession; the only
notable, and rather obvious piece of factual information it contains on
this score is to remind us of the "absence of lawyers altogether" in the
Laccadive and Minicoy Islands: (pp. 24-5, 133). Thus, for example, it
would have been worth recalling that the so-called "human resources of
the bar" give us, however, only 183 lawyers per one million of the
population as against 507 lawyers in U.K., 1595 in U.S.A., 947 in
Newzealand, 638 in Australia and 769 in Canada. Analogies of legal
services drawn between the "old" common law countries and India
become even less meaningful when the lawyer-population ratio is borne
in view. Statewide distribution of lawyers reveals startling disparities.
Whereas the undivided Bombay had IS, 516 lawyers (263 per one million
people), Orissa had only 1,321 (75 per one million people) and Assam
911 (76 per one million people). This was the state of affairs in 1958
(Galanter, 1969 : 204-5, 209) . One can only conjecture the present
position. The Report's nobly conceived programmatic "vistarama of a
wider judicare for India" could have moved more effectively towards
fulfilment with some solicitude for research in social facts of the FLS.
5.8 Moving away from courts and constables, we find an alarming
ignorance concerning facts of legislative institutions and processes. We
do not have organized information on turnover, in number and type, of
legislative enactments in different states; of time-lags between initiation
of bills, their passage through the House, the intervening work of joint
select committees, and the time-lags between passage and the gubernatorial
or the Presidential assent to the bills. Much less do we have any
information on the quantity of amending and repealing legislation, or of
the private member's bills. Political scientists and lawyers should even
go back to some unfashionable sources for inspiration. Herbert Spencer
counted in 1812, much before the emergence of our present infatuation
with "empiricism", that in the parliamentary sessions in 1870-72 "there
have been repealed, separately or in groups, 650 Acts, belonging to the
present reign, above many of the preceding reigns" (Spencer, 1894 :
118).
5.9 Nor do we have (although useful beginnings have been made in
this direction by political scientists) much data on the social profiles of
national and state legislators. One would have thought that political
scientists and constitutional lawyers who often proclaim the failure in
evolution of constitutional conventions would at least have thought of
ascertaining facts such as civic education, understanding of the constitu-
tion, levels of linguistic proficiency of our legislators. Political scientists
and lawyers should be able, in the light of social facts about legislators
and legislative activity, to assess the relevance of the Westminster model
of parliamentary system more or less embodied in our Constitution.
5.10 In some areas, legal scholars have themselves the need for
organized factual information. Thus, while "the jurisdictional territory"
covered by administrative adjudicatory bodies is "very expansive and
touches upon many aspects of human activity" no one "knows for sure
as to how many of these exist as no comprehensive study of these bodies
has yet been attempted in India" (Jain & Jain, 1973 : 132). This
acknowledged shortfall in information, in an area of phenomenal expansion
of the FLS, underlines further the need for precise ascertainment of its
institutions.
5.11 The SRP can make valuable, and rather easy, beginnings in this
area. Most of the basic information would be available in government and
public documents, although a lot of it would have to be reorganized and
refined. In some areas, rather specific efforts may be necessary. We do

not think that the financial outlay required for this nation-wide data-hunt
will be very heavy. Nor will questions of method, approach or organiza-
tion prove very complex. The theoretic and policy payoffs of a body of
scientific data on the "presence" of the FLS are, as emphasized earlier,
of a very high 'order.
VI Mapping the FLS : the Court System
6.1 The common law culture, which we continue to share, is highly

court-centred. Judges, lawyers, law teachers and students are, by and
large, accustomed to be indifferent to the state of law in legislative
gestation and to its career outside the courtroom. The tradition of taught
law (Roscoe Pound rightly used to say that "taught law is tough law")
and of the Bar and the Bench which regards, again by and large, all other
aspects save the doctrines of the law as "given" is principally responsible
for the excessive preoccupation with the court system. Concern of law
men with justice has also been mostly a history of concern with justice
under the law. All this has naturally led to identification of law with
merely one aspect, however, eminent, of if-namely the normative/
cultural aspect (see supra para 4.4).
6.2 By the same token, social scientists have, somewhat understan-
dably, regarded law as a very arcane technology and discipline. The
concerns of law teachers have naturally seemed far removed from those
of the economist, the political scientist, the anthropologist and the
sociologist. The fields of discourse, and cognitive styles, of the appellate
court decisions have appeard alien to social scientists. Their work in
India for the last quarter century has, therefore, altogether surrendered
the social scientific grasp of the law (understood as norm-productive
operation of the court-system) as a property of social-structure. All this,
of course, does not enable us to comprehend why social scientists
themselves did not explore the institutions of the legal systems and social
aspects of legal processes, as has happened elsewhere. The diffusion of
the very conception of law as a normative mass, one suspects, is only
one, even if a major, reason for this neglect.
6.3 Be that as it may, the specialized misidentification of "law" with
the court-system in its normative productivity cannot be washed away.
But it could be slowly transformed by a strategy of sponsored social
scientific research to a concern with these aspects of the court-system
which could make the preoccupation with the normative system itself
sociologically more meaningful. In the process, the field of law can also
be transformed, slowly but surely, into a multidisciplinary domain. It is
with this objective that we give much importance to the court-system in
our proposals for sociological research in law. Even though this way of
proceeding may not be congenial, realistic research strategies require us

to start from where we are, rather, than from where we ought to be.
6.4 In what follows, we use the term "court-system" globally,
distinguishing (for example) "civil" sector of the system from the
"criminal" sector only when exigencies of context so require. It needs
also to be stressed that by and large we indicate general areas of study,
and not specific research proposals.
6.5 The courts are typically passive institutions. They are passive in
the sense that they cannot of their own at all perform social "stability"
or "change" tasks; the courts need activation of their jurisdiction by
litigants or state officials. The initiative to achieve the court-system is,
theoretically, available to each and every person in the realm and is,
practically only moderately exercised. Yet we do not have any scientific
comprehension of who activates the court-system, for which problems
it is usually activated, for what purposes it is activated, and what results
arise from such activation. All we know at a sufficiently sophisticated
level is what norms are used in the process of activation and redressal
of grievances or disputes by the court-system. This kind of knowledge,
without more, comprehensively obstructs and even distorts in many
directions our understanding of legal processes and the role of law in
society.
6.6 Recourse Patterns: The first question "who activates the court-
system" directs us to investigate whether the initiation of litigation
(making of claims or initiating a prosecution) is merely random or a
patterned activity. By nature ofthings not all social claims (or prosecutions
for crimes) will reach the court-system; only some will reach. It is,
therefore, imperative to find out recourse-patterns : they may even hold
a key to the understanding of "the character and impact 9f the judicial
process" (Galanter, 1974 : 3). If some social actors come more often
than others as claimants before the court, and SOme others never or
rarely so come, then we have a formulation of the problem of uneven or
discrepant utilization of the resource of judicial intervention in social
conflict resolution. We have also, simultaneously, an understanding of
the attributes (of indentity, organization, legal competence, resources of
time, money and manpower) which are associated with those who
frequently have recourse to courts as against those who have it
infrequently or rarely or not at all.
6.7 In the administration of criminal justice, the pattern of recourse
is, of course, clearly established by the dominance of state agencies in
the prosecutorial initiative in major criminal matters. This pattern histori-
cally established is socially visible too. Yet we lack organized information
about the typical conditions under which this prosecutorial initiative is
exercised or the frequency of this exercise for various categories of
offences, and the social actors over or against whom this initiative is
typically exercised. A comparative profile of socio-economic attributes

of those accused of various offences in different law-regions may be one
way of developing a typology of the subjects of the exercise of the
prosecutorial initiative; and may highlight deeply disturbing unevenness
in the reach and effects of the administration of criminal justice. Some
information concerning the socio-economic background of apprehended
juvenile delinquents in 1971 shows that of the 96,144 juveniles whose
socio-economic data was available, more than 80 per cent were in lower
income group families (income below Rs. 150/- p.m.), 35.2 per cent
juveniles arrested belonged to scheduled caste and tribes, and only 2.1
per cent of the juveniles arrested were above matric/higher secondary,
53.4 per cent of them being altogether illiterate. Out of 1,03,419 juveniles
apprehended, 83548 were sent to courts. 19.9 per cent were imprisoned,
1.4 per cent sent to adult jails, 1.1 per cent to reformatories and borstals,
2.2 per cent to schools and institutions, 5.8 per cent restored to guardians.
30.5 per cent cases were pending; and 36.9 per cent juveniles were
either acquitted or "otherwise disposed of' (Government of India, 1974:
46-58). These figures of law enforcement, one suspects, cannot entirely
be explained by simple correlations between socio-economic status and
delinquency.
6.8 But our system of criminal law also allows ample room for
private prosecutions for a number of offences. Also, a large number of
offences could also be "compounded" before the courts. The prosecutors
have also the power to withdraw prosecution. The judge is empowered
to convict an accused who pleads guilty. Patterns of private prosecution,
compounding, and selfjudgment (guilty plea) also need to be investigated.
6.9 But we know even less of the recourse-patterns in the civil
courts. Confining ourselves for the moment merely to civil courts of
general jurisdiction we need to explore the range of their users, by
devising a typology of the parties, at various levels of the civil court
system (district court, subordinate judge's court, munsiff's court).
Perhaps, a series of small, self contained studies could be made, by way
of a beginning in this direction, of the small causes court, involving
pecuniary claims upto Rs. 2,000. Who makes what claims? It should be
recalled here that the Fourteenth Report of the Law 'Commission (1958
: 17) estimated that nearly 80 per cent of civil suits instituted in 1954
involved claims of Rs. 500 or less. The corresponding 1964 position is
that such suits represent nearly 73 per cent of the workload of the civil
court-system. Obviously, studies of recourse pattern, and workload, of
the small causes courts are of as much importance as those of the
Supreme Court of India.
6.10 As we move from those courts meant for small causes and
"small" men to the higher levels of the civil court-system, it would be
interesting to verify the hypothesis (which has been validated in some
very recent American Studies) that plaintiffs in civil courts of general

jurisdiction are "predominantly business or governmental units while
defendants are overwhelmingly individuals" (Galanter, 1974; Warner,
1974 : 423-5). [The ratio of men-women plaintiffs and the SES (socio-
economic-status) differentials among types of plaintiffs could also be
explored].
6.11 Whether or not one agrees with the view that the centre of
adjudicatory gravity is shifting or has shifted to administrative adjudicatory
agencies from the formal court-system, it is essential to include some of
the major administrative adjudicative institutions within any recourse
pattern probing. Disregarding fine distinctions between administrative
"tribunals" and other administrative adjudicatory bodies, it would be
scientifically rewarding and socially relevant to examine typology of
litigants before a few selected tribunalslbodies. Perhaps, it would, thus,
be most rewarding to initiate studies of adjudicatory bodies on labour law
(under the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947) or rent control laws.
6.12 Finally, without being exhaustive, a very important area of
investigation for recourse-patterns is furnished by the guaranteed funda-
mental right to constitutional remedies for the enforcement of the
fundamental rights under Article 32 of the Constitution. Who or which
type of petitioner has most frequently invoked the intervention of the
Supreme Court and for enforcement of which fundamental rights? Even
if social profiles of such citizens may not be adequately available, a mere
quantitative analysis of activation of the Article 32 jurisdiction is of
compelling urgency. It would enable us to quantify one part of the
workload of the Supreme Court and to that extent determine whether it
is overburdened by this recourse. More importantly, we may know the
.rights most often claimed to have been violated and, therefore, in need
of instant judicial protection and support. This would also enable us to
determine (a) the degree of diffusion ofwhat may be called "constitutional
consciousness" in the citizenry and (b) the type of persons who are able
to more or less, "appropriate" the principal agency of constitutional
judicial review of governmental action. The social debate over whether
the court is prone to protect rights to property over rights to personal
liberty may also be clarified if it is discovered that the salient recourse
pattern leaves the court with no other alternative.
6.13 The discernment of recourse patterns, whether at systemic or
sub-systemic levels ofthe court-system, will enable us to pursue meaning-
fully the problem ofnon-recourse. What happens to parties' legal positions
and relations when they do not have (either intentionally or through
disabilities) recourse to the court-system? Several factors may help us
explain non-recourse: (a) lack of awareness that the dispute has legal
aspects; (b) inability, despite such awareness, to activate the court-
system, arising from economic disability or from the lack of competent
professional legal services or from remoteness from courts and

cumbersomeness of its procedures; (c) disenchantment or alienation
from the court-system; (d) culture-specific disincentives to recourse to
court-system; (e) availability of other modes of dispute settlement through
local informal control systems or negotiation inter parties; (f) a high
tolerance of dispute-behaviour.
6.14 Discovery of recourse-patterns will thus enable us to understand
other relevant factors "explaining" non-recourse. It will also lead us to
a greater comprehension of the types of individuals or organizations who
are the primary "users" and "beneficiaries" of the court-system. We will
also be enabled to perceive levels of "legal competence" of individuals
and organizations. Power-differentials (economic ability, organizational
complexity, access to legal services) among court-activators will also
become evident. Reasons for the exuberance of normative activity in
certain areas, as compared with normative dormancy in others, will also
be effectively grasped. Propensities of the judicial system towards
certain parties to disputes may also become more visible.
6.15 Judicial Workload and Litigation Flow: The second question
"For what problems is the court-system activated ?" directs us first to
the quantum and pattern of the workload of the courts and second to the
flow of litigation through the hierarchy of courts. On both these aspects,
we lack organized or scientifically useful data though we have some
rudimentary information in various government reports, publications and
a wealth of informed opinion in Bar and Bench, which is awaiting
scientific exploitation. Let us tum to the specific areas for study in each
of the two above-stated aspects.
6.16 Judicial Workload: The first question here is : how many cases
are filed, and eventually decided, by courts in each layer of the hierarchy
of courts? Second, what statistical norms emerge for the period necessary
for the disposal of a case? The time-periods will naturally vary according
to the position of a court in the hierarchy, and the categories of litigated
subject-matters. It is worth observing here that the notion of "delay" in
judicial disposal simply does not make scientific sense in the absence of
statistical norms concerning time-consumption for the disposal of various
categories of the litigated subject-matters. What we routinely and some-
what unthinkingly mean by "delay" (except of course in gross situations)
is also, be it stressed, a direct function of the normatively of the legal
system, i.e. disposal of litigated subject-matter is governed by a host of
procedural and substantive norms oriented to the doing of justice. In this
sense, consumption of time ("delay" in lay parlance) is a structural
property of the FLS.
6.17 Third, /LTe certain norms of judicial disposal laid down for
subordinate judiciary by the state. High Courts? If so, how are those
related to the quantum of the workload? Are these disposal norms also
SOCIQ-LEGAL RESEARCH IN INDIA 667
related to the available judicial manpower? Do these norms work?

6.18 Fourth, does the workload of various courts on various
matters lend itself to any kind of pattern? What matters are more
frequently brought before the courts? Can we work out for any court-
system under study charts of "most litigated" to "least litigated" subject-
matters? Perceptive scholars (e.g. Sharma, 1964) have stressed, for
example, the lack of civil actions for personal injury in tort law, despite
the fairly rapid industrialization processes in India. Similarly noteworthy
is the relative "lack" of litigation in areas such as consumer protection,
environmental protection, professional negligence, etc.
6.19 Fifth, once we discern variations in workload patterns,
explanatory explorations become crucial. Why are certain problems
brought before courts most and others least? Is the pattern of workload
related to the pattern of court-activators? Are the "least litigated" matters
indicative of lack of litigious capability, initiative or stakes? Are there
substantive and procedural difficulties associated with taking of such
matters to court? Is it in the interests of society to maintain the existing
patterns of judicial workload? If not, what measures are needed to
rectify the "appropriation" of the court-system by certain social groups
for certain subject-matters?
6.20 Sixth, the workload and pattern profile of the court-system
should also yield indicators of "efficiency" of courts in their tasks of
settling disputes, or resolving social conflicts, and lead to policy-proposals,
based on scientific assessment concerning expansion, re-structuring or
functioning of the court-system.
6.21 Litigation Flow: From the time of the initial move activating
the court-system to its ultimate disposal by the High or Supreme Court,
litigation flows "through a decisional system containing multiple points
of potential termination" (Howard, 1973 : 33). The flow of litigation
from trial to appellate courts, from appellate to High Courts, and often
from High Courts to the Supreme Court of India is an important uncharted
area of study. Such a study is of undoubted importance, since it could
indicate areas of convergence and conflict within the court-system, and
illustrate the range and type of disputed matters over which such
convergence and conflict are displayed. Study of these matters would
also show the measure of deference shown, and prestige enjoyed by the
highest court in the country and/or of the particular state. Since all these
are variable matters, one should be enabled to perceive the relation
between the Supreme Court and the High Courts varying between
different periods of time.
6.22 Is the Supreme Court more supportive of High Court determina-
tions-or less? Does it sustain more High Court outcomes/decisions or
less? How does the Supreme Court act, for example, in its exercise of
powers under Article 132 (2)* of granting of special leave to appeal

despite a refusal by a High Court to do so on the ground that the case
involves "a substantial question of law as to the interpretation of this
constitution"? How often, in respect to what matters, and how frequently
with regard to each High Court, has the court exercised this power?
Some questions need to be asked in respect to the court's power under
Article 136 to grant in its discretion, "special leave to appeal from any
judgment, decree, determination, sentence, or order in any cause or
matter passed or made by any court or tribunal in the territory of India."
(The measure of deference towards the Supreme Court shown by the
High Courts can also be studied by asking how each High Court has
interpreted the binding quality of the Supreme Caurt judgments under
Article 141 of the Constitution).
6.23 A related, and equally important, aspect is the discernment of
the patterns of appeals made to the Supreme Court of India. Aside from
the review/commutation of death sentences imposed by the High Court
upon reversing an acquittal by the lower court [Article 134 (l) (a)], wide
leeways exist to activate the Supreme Court's appellate jurisdiction. In
what matters have parties sought to invoke this jurisdiction? In which
matters have they failed to activate it? What kinds of petitioners have
sought to activate the court in appeal with what results? (Similar studies
need to be made for the activation ofthe High Court appellate jurisdiction).
6:24 The Purpose of Court Recourse: The problems for which the
court-system is activated may not in all cases adequately reflect the
purposes for which it is activated. The initiation and pursuit of litigation
is properly viewed as an aspect of an ongoing social interaction and as
an aspect of rational (and non-rational) strategies of conflict. In other
words one does not always go to courts in search of legal settlement
of disputes or resolution of normative disagreements.
6.25 Some types of court-recourse can be better understood as
being of symbolic, rather than instrumental, nature. The dichotomy is
useful provided it is used discerningly (Gusfeld, 1967: 175). Certainly,
court-recourse is symbolic when the laws under whose auspices it takes
place are pre-eminently symbolic, such as, the prosecutions under the
Untouchability (Offences) Act, 1956. A symbolic legislation is one
which exhorts attitudinal or value changes. Its emphasis is on education
or ideology propagation rather than on routine legal implementation.
Symbolic court-recourse, in such cases, means infrequent and broadly
ineffective exercises of prosecutorial initiatives by state agencies.
6.26 There is another dimension of symbolic court-recourse. We
may speak of symbolic court-recourse when the litigant's objective is
merely the act of initiating litigation rather than its fully-fledged pursuit.
Repealed by the Constitution (Forty-fourth) Amendxnent Act 1978.

Here the act(s) of initiating litigation are also acts of symbolic

communication to the adversary by the plaintiff. The nature, contents,
and effect of such communication depends of course on the parties in
their socio-cultural locations. Symbolic court-recourse may thus
communicate the willingness of one party to risk the publicization of a
"private" conflict or dispute. Or, the court-recourse may symbolize the
asymmetry in the adversaries' relative power-positions, by highlighting
cultural, technological and economic access of the adversary to the FLS.
Symbolic court-recourse may itselfbe an exercise in sanctioning process
when the cultural factors disfavour, or even stigmatize, an individual's
role as a defendant in the FLS. It may contribute substantially to our
understanding of law as a social system to attempt further conceptual
elaboration of these matters, followed by empirical investigations.
6.27 Aside from symbolic recourse patterns, it is well known that
often parties have recourse to courts not with a view to obtain decisive
judicial intervention but with a view to arrive, perhaps through thus
enhanced bargaining capacity, to a negotiated settlement of disputes. In
such out-of court settlement, the machinery of the administration of
justice is appropriated for the ostensibly private ends of a resourceful
litigant. Whether or not such a happening is desirable, there is need for
a thorough study of the volume, frequency, the nature, and causes of
such uses of the court-system.
6.28 Nyaya Panchayats and Village Courts: The Nyaya Panchayats
and Village Courts, under statutory auspices, must also be viewed as
aspects of the court-system of the FLS. Even sociologists studying
village societies have almost completely ignored Nyaya Panchayats and
Village Courts, although Village Courts in some parts ofIndia, have been
functioning for a considerable length of time. In Madras, for example,
Village Courts have been functioning since 1889 under, the Village
Courts Act, 1888. Yet, in the present writer's knowledge, no sociological
study of the working of the courts has yet been made. Nor have been
legal scholars enthused by the only sponsored study, the Report of the
Study Team of Nyaya Panchayats published in 1962. Since then there
have been one or two state reports but they (or the institutions) have not
been thought worthy of study either by lawmen or social scientists.
6.29 It is imperative to redress this cumulative neglect in social
science scholarship. We must find answers to the following questions:
How many Nyaya Panchayat and Village Courts are there? What are their
patterns of functioning and" workload? How do they resolve conflicts?
What are the justice-qualities in their decisional processes and outcomes?
What are their relations with the "formal" legal system? What are the
attitudes and perceptions of the village people to these systems? What
methods of evaluation are adopted by various governments to assess the
functioning of these institutions? What, if any, have been the salient
structural and jurisdictional changes in these institutions over the years?

Have these institutions supplemented or supplanted other indigenous
dispute institutions? Have these institutions been carriers of the values of
the FLS?
6.30 Obviously, most of these studies will have to be region-specific
and will entail a degree of field-work, and considerable degree of cultural
empathy. An overall sociological understanding of the communities
where these institutions function will be necessary. It goes without
saying that linguistic proficiency will also be essential. The ICSSR
should activate its regional centres in promoting research in this area.
For far too long concern with justice in India has meant justice of the
(broadly) court-systems in urban areas, to which a very substantial
number of Indian populace has little or no access. Scholarship must
return to their problems, even as we proudly celebrate the golden jubilee
of our Constitution.
VII Mapping the Informal Social Control System (ICS)
7.1 The study of dispute institutions in society has been, and

remains, a major item on the agenda of sociology of law. Juristic
preoccupation with the official legal systems has generally led to the
belief that other dispute institutions are wayside relics, conceivably of
marginal importance, to the study of law in society. Indeed, the general
tendency has been to subsume studies of non-official dispute institutions
under the rubric of "cultural" or "legal" anthropology, an exotic field for
a few specialists which a busy judge, lawyer or legislator finds of little
immediate relevance.
7.2 And even "legal" anthropology has yet to win recognition in
India as an integrated discipline. Dispute-resolution institutions and
processes figure, but only incidentally, in ethnographic accounts. Their
significance to social stability and change is perceived only occasionally.
Tribal ethnography has also generally overlooked the significance of
dispute institutions and processes (ICSSR, 1972 : 31-133, 258-61 ;
Veena Das, 1973). Even when some preoccupation with these is visible,
opportunities for systematic investigation appear to have been surrendered
(Baxi, 1973). India does not have any studies of the type presented by
E. Adamson Hoebel (1954), Max Gluckman (1965; 1967), Paul Bohannan
(1957), A.L. Epstein (1964) to mention only a few landmarks in legal
anthropology. The fact that leading Indian universities continue to fall
back upon Sir Henry Maine's seminal works for post-graduate legal
education is not just a testimony to obsolete legal curricula but it is also
a sad commentary on the state of art in the field.
7.3 It is essential that the ICSSR encourage, as a matter of high
priority inter-disciplinary studies of one basic aspect of the les in India,
namely, the indigenous dispute institutions existent under non-state or

social auspices. These institutions are, broadly speaking, to be found in
"rural" and/or "tribal" areas. The justification supporting this
recommendation for research-promotion is as under.
7.4 The persistence of indigenous systems of dispute-handling sets
some very real limits to directed social change along the lines of the
constitutionally desired social order. This would certainly be the case
insofar as these systems derive legitimation from belief systems which
are not congruent with the belief systems investing the national/state
legal systems (FLS) with legitimacy (see e.g., R.S. Freed, 1972 : 423-
35). Planned social change through the instrumentality of law must keep
these limits in full view and if so desired must progress with more
rational strategies, especially through the creation of supporti ve structures,
to overcome these limits. By the same token, scientific delineation of the
areas of compatability and of conflict between the ICS and FLS should
enable precisely the development ofrational strategies for planned change.
7.S The main research tasks in this area are as follows. First, we
need to identify (as closely as possible) the existent ICS in each law
region. Social demography of the ICS is no less important than that of
the FLS. Second, detailed ethnographical sample or pilot studies of ICS
in each law region need to be undertaken. These studies must at least
descriptively identify the structure, process, norms, values and efficacy
of the ICS. Third, such studies must yield findings on the nature of
interaction between the ICS and FLS at cultural, social and political
levels. Are these relations neutral or complementary or conflicting? To
what extent are the justice-values of both ICS and FLS compatible?
VIII Effectiveness of Legal Direction and Control as an

Aspect of Planned Social Change
8.1 Post-independence India is characterized by the talismanic use

of the law-making technique in the handling of problems of social
change. The quality of law-making is, however, diverse and variable.
Some laws are made after mature consideration and detailed enquiry;
they are assured 'of supportive structures (administrative, enforcement,
public opinion). But, of necessity, a large number of legislations are
characterized by short gestation periods, little or no pre-legislative social
enquiry and feeble supportive structures. Moreover, some laws are
clearly symbolic gesturings or rituals, intended to serve social functions
different from controlling behaviour through coercive implementation.
8.2 Obviously, we need to understand scientifically the pre-requisites
of effectiveness or "impact". Considerable conceptual elucidation of the
notions of "effectiveness" and "impact" is the first, and a grasp of
methods of measurement of "effectiveness" or "impact" is the second,
among the prime preliminary tasks (see Baxi, 1974). Effectiveness/

impact has to be determined by reference not merely to the declared
policies of the legislation but also by reference to its unintended
consequences. Measures of effectiveness/impact will also vary according
to the initial decision to regard a law "symbolic" or "instrumental", a task
full of hazards. If it is an "instrumental" legislation that we wish to
evaluate, the evaluation has at least to take account of both "enforcement"
and compliance without enforcement. Once again considerable conceptual
clarifications of these latter would become imperative. Since
"effectiveness/impact" obviously involves time-dimension, intervening
variables (e.g. judicial decisions, amendments, administration) will have
to be borne in view. Similarly, in terms of method, recourse to such
sophisticated techniques such as time-series (or interrupted time-series)
may also become necessary.
8.3 In any event, this area is the more promising in terms of the
transmission of inter-disciplinary skills and a coalescence of interests of
the lawyer and social scientist. While any listing of priority areas would
be debatable, we propose that the SRP promote research at least in the
following aspects, which have relevance to the areas delineated generally
by the ICSSR for the current plan period :
(1) agrarian reform laws, with special reference to the conditions of
landless labourers or agriculture labour generally;
(2) anti-untouchability law and related legal measures of "compensa-
tory discrimination" (reservation in schools, employment, legislatures) ;
(3) legal measures directed to the amelioration of the plight of the
scheduled tribes;
(4) anti-poverty legal measures (beggary laws, Minimum Wages
Act, Contract Labour Act, Beedi Workers Act etc.)
(5) administration of food and drugs adulteration Acts.
8.4 To be sure, there are other equally crucial areas for "impact"
research in the fields of labour, corporation and tax laws. But the areas
indicated above are among the least explored (on an inter-disciplinary
basis, we hasten to add), and are of pivotal importance for the attainment
of socially desired order proclaimed by the Constitution. The ICSSR
should, however, undoubtedly assist laissez faire research in the other
areas, not specified herein.
IX Anomie, Alienation, Legitimacy, Violence and Social

Change Through the Law by Direct Action
9. I The programme for sponsored research has so far not touched

on the basic aspects of the legitimacy of legal and political orders and
diverse forms of challenges confronting them. The bases of legitimacy
of the legal and political order are formally articulated in the Constitution
as amended by the exercise of the constituent power by the Parliament

and the Supreme Court. To the extent that the legal and political orders
fail to uphold the constitutional values and to attain the constitutionally
desired social transformation, they will lose legitimacy. By the same
token, the constitutional bases of legitimation may themselves be in the
peril of replacement.
9.2 There are rich traditions of sociological thought dealing with
"anomie", "alienation", "legitimacy", "violence" and "direct action". One
prime task is to relate these to ponderings on the Indian legal and political
orders. There is no pressing need to worry about how these matters may
be made more amenable to empirical research in the Indian context. It
would be enough to generate and diffuse consciousness of these
conceptions and their high relevance to any understanding of the dynamics
of legal and political order.
9.3 Thus, for example, it is necessary to reflect on the question:
In what"sense does the legal order contribute to alienation? Alienation
may here be understood in terms of five meanings distilled by Seeman:
"powerlessness", "meaninglessness", "normlessness", "isolation" and
"self estrangement" (Seeman, 1959). The question may also be fruitfully
reversed: "In what ways can (or does) legal order alleviate alienation?"
9.4 Similarly, little or no effort is made to integrate theoretical
perspectives on "anomie" in the Indian literature on social deviance.
Whether we view anomie in Durkheimian terms as entailing "overweening
ambition" and breakdown or regulatory norms or in Mertonian terms as
disjunction between "cultural goals" and "socially structured opportunity
or merely in terms of "differentials in the availability of illegitimate
means", a vast range ofIndian materials on criminology needs theoretical
perspectives generated by "anomie" theorizing. The relevance of anomie
behaviour and emergence of anomie associational groups to the bases of
legitimacy of legal and political order in India needs contemplation.
9.5 Related to all this, but also somewhat distinct, is the problem of
violence in relation to political and legal order. The latter articulates
conditions and extent of permissible violence and structures its exercise.
On the other hand, the story of the law has always been one of constant
struggle to appropriate unto itself all the forms of legitimate violence. In
other words, we need to think about the shifting boundaries of per-
missible and proscribed violence in Indian society, of the capabilities and
responses oflegal political orders to inter-group and intra-group violence,
and of the viability of the legal-political ideological controls over the
deployment of permissible violence by the agents of law and order. It is
also noteworthy that violence appears to be a more effective means of
interest articulation in a society committed to constitutional democracy,
assigning high priority to freedom of speech and expression and
association.
9.6 Jurisprudents and political scientists working in relative, if

regrettable, isolation have repeatedly emphasized the point that one of the
major functions of law or political decision making is the satisfaction of
human demands. Roscoe Pound continued to refine and reiterate,
throughout his long lifetime of dedication to sociological jurisprudence,
his view of law as an instrument of maximum satisfaction of de facto
human demands, with least friction and waste (Pound, 1959). Almond
and Powell (1966) similarly attribute a key role to the notion of demand
at a perhaps more sophisticated conceptual level when they describe the
process of making human demands as "interest articulation" which, to
them, is a "first functional step in the political conversion process."
These theorists have, in their own ways, naturally assigned greater
conceptual and research emphasis to institutional interest groups taking
only marginal (and occasionally disparaging) note of the process of the
formulation of demands by groups through direct action. To some
political scientists such demand-formations amount to no more than
"spontaneous penetrations into the political system from the society" to
be treated as the output of "anomie interest groups" not worthy of
serious study while they remain such, for their potential for "successful
interest articulation" stands minimized by the great competition from
"numerous organized groups". (Almond and Powell, 1966; Kothari,
1970). For the jurisprudent, the problem of "direct action" is agonizingly
intertwined with the intractable problems ofjustification of civil disobedi-
ence and opposition to an unjust law. Neither approach comes to grips
with the problematics of the relationship .between direct action and
sociolegal change.
9.7 By direct action we mean recourse to the "extra-constitutional
modalities of articulation of human demands. (Baxi, 1967). Familiar
examples of such techniques are demonstrations, processions, strikes,
(and in the Indian context) fasting, dharna, gherao, and the recent
"landgrab" movements in some states. A study of the direct action
patterns at various levels seems to be crucial to the understanding of the
problems of institutionalization of the democratic order and values
envisioned by the Indian Constitution (Baxi, 1967) as indeed it has now
become imperative for the viablility of democratic order in the United
States (Skolnick, 1970).
9.8 More simply, but less accurately, direct action may be viewed
as an "unconventional" modality of interest aggregation (Almond and
Powell, 1966). The multiple ambiguities of this characterization are
worth pondering upon. Direct action may be viewed as "unconventional"
in the sense that such behaviour is supposed not to have attained
legitimacy in comparisons with other modalities of formulating demands.
But this is a presumption, not a verified conclusion. Second, it may be
thought that such assertion of demands is relatively infrequent meriting,
SOCIa-LEGAL RESEARCH IN INDIA 675
therefore, the verdict of unconventionality; but in the Indian situation

only the novice will accept this proposition as true, and in the United
States and other Western democracies it is becoming progressively
vulnerable. Finally, (without being exhaustive) direct action may be
regarded as "unconventional" simply because its cognizance at a systematic
level is difficult and may threaten the neat symmetry of political or
juristic theories. But the unconventionality then arises not from the
subject matter but from inability or the unwillingness of the theorist
concerned to accommodate it in a given conceptual framework.
9.9 Initially, studies in this field should focus on direct action only
in so far as it involves explicit demands for social change through law,
as when the demands are directed to the creation or modification of new
or existent legal rules and regimes or to the more efficient functioning
of the legal system and its parts. This somewhat arbitrary cut-off point
does not of course preclude the future broadening of the enquiry into the
wider arena of political decision-making and inter or even intra-group
relations. The wider aspects of the outcomes of direct action whether in
terms of political mobilization, socialization or communication may need
then to be considered.
9.10 Our first task will be to quantify the incidence of direct action
at the national level with a view to ascertain whether it has been an
important agency of demand-inputs in the political system. An allied task
will be to classify statewise the incidence of direct action, with a view
to studying regional differences and correlations in terms of types.
organization, governmental management, and outcomes of direct action.
One hypothesis here is that direct action behaviour is pre-eminently an
urban phenomenon. Another is that the incidence of such behaviour will
be greater in those urban centres in which the seat of the government of
the States or of the Union is located.
9.11 Direct action may be classified with reference to two principal
dimensions. Direct action may be peaceful or may involve use of force
by or against those participating in such action. Direct action may also
be lawful or law-infringing. It would seem obvious that when direct
action involves impermissible use of force by participants it is law-
infringing, notwithstanding the social and cultural ambivalence (naturally
shared by the legal system) concerning the use of force.
9.12 However, it remains an open (and hitherto unexplored) question
whether use of force by the direct action participants can in some cases
be regarded as the permissible self defensive use. Peaceful direct action,
on the other hand, would routinely be lawful, though the legal status of
most varieties of law-infringing direct action remains unclear. This latter
aspect raises immediately questions of constitutional interpretation and
relatively distantly those of moral justification, including the problems of
justification of law-breaking. Suppose that the State or the Union enacts
a law making fasting unto death or for a specified period a criminal

offence. Direct action participants resorting to this modality will be
committing a breach of this law with the ostensible, and as yet legally
untested assertion that this law infringes the right to free speech, fasting
being a kind of communication falling within the protection of the
constitutional guarantee. Other examples abound. Our main tasks in this
area will be to quantify the prevalent forms of direct action and to
hypothesize cOilfrning legality and legitimacy of some of them.
9.13 The .on-studies" of direct action may well be content to
subsume such behaviour-patterns under general categories, such as,
"anomie" behaviour (Almond and Powell, 1966) or "agitational politics"
(Kothari, 1970). Studies of direct action must take into account problems
associated with internal organization, leadership, elite-formation,
participation, recruitment, structural and ideological constraints,
socialization, internal factions, and longevity of direct action groups, for
all these have a direct bearing on the outcomes of direct action, and
consequently upon legal and political systems. A simple focus on the
leadership, mobilization and participatory role of members ofparliamentary
or state legislatures gives rise to several important hypotheses, such as,
the following :
(a) Legislators' participation in direct action processes is more
conducive to "successful" outcomes;
(b) the social and cultural acceptance of forms of direct action is
significantly related to the frequency of participation by the
elected legislators;
(c) the efficiency of the governmental management of direct action
movements is partly a function of the composition of the direct
action groups, and particularly of the participation oflegislators
in such groups;
(d) the use of force by or against the participants in direct action
varies according to role and function of the legislator participants;
(e) participation by legislators in direct action programmes has a
feedback effect upon their behaviour in the legislative chambers,
which might partly explain the chronic difficulties of Indian
legislatures in enforcing the rules of legislative procedures;
(j) contrary to the common belief, the creation of "direct action
constituencies" by the legislator participation in such activities
tends to strengthen the legitimacy of the democratic order.
specially when the outcomes can be rated "successful".
9.14 A study of "outcomes" of direct action is also necessary.
Preliminary to the canvassing of the range of outcome-dimensions is the
clarification of the sequential or phasal analysis of the outcomes. An
outcome analysis must take into account the entire situation in which
direct action occurs. One way to do it is to keep in mind the pre-
outcome, the outcome and the post-outcome phases, individually in
relation to each specific direct action movement under study and
cumulatively in relation to the totality of such movements studied. An
outcome analysis must at least advert to the following levels :
(i) The. level ofarticulation ofdemands: Are the demands specific
or diffused? Do the demands summon politically feasible or
utopian action directed to legal change? Is the articulation of
demands preliminary, reiterative, or consol idative ?
Correspondingly, is the articulation intended to be (or has
merely the effect of) symbolic input in the demand structure?
(ii) The level of the justification of the form of direct action : On
what criteria, if any, the recourse to a particular form of direct
action is explained or explainable? What are the apperceived
coercion-potentials of various forms of direct action ?
(iii) The level of decision making on the demands thus articulated:
The responsive decisional outcomes may be traced along a
spectrum consisting of : symbolic affirmation or denial of the
demands by the governmental decision-makers; adoption of the
demands by the non-governmental legislative decision-makers;
affirmative or negative governmental decision on demands;
perpetuation of status quo or institutionalization of deadlock in
decision-making (e.g., cow-slaughter situation).
(iv) The level ofthe organization ofthe direct action group: Do the
groups tend to moderate or escalate demands upon satisfaction
or non-satisfaction? Do they tend to become fully institutionalized
pressure groups? What is the impact upon the direct action
groups of the range of the decisional responses described in
(iii) above.
9.15 A study along these lines deserves the highest research priority
and the claims it would make on scholarly and extra-scholarly resources
will be amply justified by the overall results. In its initial stages, the
research may be purely archival. Many valuable sources include national
newspaper files, legislative debates, judicial and governmental records
and police records (this latter presenting imponderables of access). On
the whole, a researcher in this area is likely to be greeted by embarrassment
de riches rather than by the dearth of materials.
Other methods such as on-the-scene observation, survey,
interviewing, and even participatory observation (this latter involving
two-fold risks of annihilation, extinction as a human being, and extinction
as uninvolved scientific observer) come in as important auxiliaries.
These methods can be more relevant for the contemporary and future
incidents of recourse to direct action,
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SOCIO-LEGAL RESEARCH IN INDIA

Upendra Baxi '" '"

I The social setting for advanced legal research in India

'" Originally published as an occasional monograph in 1975 by the Indian Council

This aggravates further the demoralization within the law teaching

1.17 Prospects for Interdisciplinary Collaboration : Theoretical and

Review Committee (1973) also speaks of the state of art In social

2.3 The present status of law and legal research is of course

Review Committee's priority areas for sponsored research programmes,

should also be made to establish, within a framework of an agenda of

3.2 Accordingly, it is to be emphasized at the outset that the

institutional capacities and biases are, therefore, important general themes

IV The "Mapping" of the Legal Systems

4.1 Legal systems can be conceptualized in three principal ways.

social behaviour, ofroles, statutes, and institutions, as involving patterned

V "Mapping" of Formal Legal Systems

encompasses all institutions of society under the auspices of the state,

differentials, within each law-region, of the "presence" of the FLS : it

refined. In some areas, rather specific efforts may be necessary. We do

VI Mapping the FLS : the Court System

6.1 The common law culture, which we continue to share, is highly

proceeding may not be congenial, realistic research strategies require us

typically exercised. A comparative profile of socio-economic attributes

very recent American Studies) that plaintiffs in civil courts of general

professional legal services or from remoteness from courts and

related to the available judicial manpower? Do these norms work?

powers under Article 132 (2)* of granting of special leave to appeal

Repealed by the Constitution (Forty-fourth) Amendxnent Act 1978.

Here the act(s) of initiating litigation are also acts of symbolic

structural and jurisdictional changes in these institutions over the years?

VII Mapping the Informal Social Control System (ICS)

7.1 The study of dispute institutions in society has been, and

namely, the indigenous dispute institutions existent under non-state or

VIII Effectiveness of Legal Direction and Control as an

8.1 Post-independence India is characterized by the talismanic use

among the prime preliminary tasks (see Baxi, 1974). Effectiveness/

IX Anomie, Alienation, Legitimacy, Violence and Social

9. I The programme for sponsored research has so far not touched

as amended by the exercise of the constituent power by the Parliament

9.6 Jurisprudents and political scientists working in relative, if

therefore, the verdict of unconventionality; but in the Indian situation

a law making fasting unto death or for a specified period a criminal

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