Author: Ranjeev C Dubey

Is IPR moral?

By Ranjeev C DubeyIntellectual Property Law
Consider this scenario. A dominant world power forces all other countries to sign a treaty acknowledging that its IPR will be respected. It then creates laws allowing its citizens to register food grain grown in other nations as original inventions in its own country. The world power now uses the…

Commercially Sustainable Bankruptcy

By Ranjeev C DubeyCompany Law
Here is another of those Incredible India Ironies. We want you to ‘Make in India’, but if your business model fails, we want you flogged, crucified, drawn and quartered. From the purely entrepreneurial standpoint, India is a harsh medieval society where there exists no practical distinction between business bankruptcy, personal…

Sky High Crucifixion

By Ranjeev C DubeyCompany Law
Vijay Mallya’s public crucifixion reached a new high on April 7 2016 when 17 lending banks declined to accept his settlement offer, putting the Supreme Court in the unenviable position of asking him to make a full disclose of all assets held by him, his wife, and his children too.…

Sedition is the new Arranged Marriage

By Ranjeev C DubeyCriminal Law
When Karl Marx observed in 1852 that history repeated itself, first as tragedy and then as farce, he could have been taking about our sedition law! Consider the absurdity of the situation we face today. Back in college, when my friends and I ranted from time to time about some…

Decriminalising Defamation

By Ranjeev C DubeyCriminal Law
When the inimitable Subramanian Swamy added his name to a gallery of eminent Indian politicians who have been sued for criminal defamation, he could at least demand that he be taken seriously because he had suffered the mandatory rite of passage! I am not being facetious. An allegation you make…

Justice for All

By Ranjeev C DubeyLitigation
ABOUT: Some of India’s landmark legislations such as MGNREGA, insurance for all, direct benefit transfer, education for all and health for all, have been instruments of bringing social equilibrium. But with crores of cases pending in Courts across the country, delayed justice continues to deny justice to the common man. How could…

My Human and other Animal Rights

By Ranjeev C DubeyConstitutional Law
Is this just the dawn of acche din or are Indians beginning to have too much of a sense of entitlement? Why do we think we deserve highways like America, public behaviour like Japan or politicians like Scandinavia? Indeed, why is it our birth right to have a house, a…

Transforming the Judicial Club

By Ranjeev C DubeyLegal Profession
It is with a great sense of privilege, not exasperation, that I find myself witness to the great ideological battles being waged in India today. In an attempt to radically re-engineer a society that changes slowly, progressive forces are fighting to transform our patriarchal carpet bagging ‘sometimes democracy’ into a…

Why deny an individual’s right to die?

By Ranjeev C DubeyConstitutional Law
India is currently witnessing a great battle seeking to redefine the idea of ‘being Indian’. How we regard life itself is a very good example. Thus, suicide, euthanasia and Santhara — the very heart of any society’s ideological construct — are being debated as never before. Trying to find a…

The trouble with privatised justice

By Ranjeev C DubeyArbitration Law
Consider the irony: many lawyers agree that India’s justice machine has all but collapsed but Indians generally believe deeply in Indian courts. Similarly, many lawyers agree that privatised justice (also known as arbitration) has all but collapsed in India but clients generally believe they provide an exciting opportunity to transcend…