Publications

Voting For God’s Sake

By Ranjeev C DubeyConstitutional Law
Between chacha-bhatija battles within the Samajwadi Party and an election budget allegedly decimated by demonetisation within the BSP, it seems the Gods may well be on the side of Hindutva in the upcoming UP elections. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court ruled on January 5 that candidates can’t ask people to vote…

Sanctimonious Surrogacy

By Ranjeev C DubeyConstitutional Law
It’s not just death and taxes that are certain: it’s also the law’s voyeuristic interest in the bedrooms of citizens! We have long struggled with the manner in which the law minds our private business. 2015 saw a bitter battle to determine if the law should decide which human orifices…

Self-inflicted Wounds

By Ranjeev C DubeyLegal Profession
When the Supreme Court directed the Government of India to establish a National Disaster Mitigation Fund in May 2016, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley observed that India’s judiciary was destroying its institution structure “step by step, brick by brick”. Who is responsible for this judicial activism is a matter of debate,…

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…