Stopping the rot

Ben Frumin examines how the vicious cycle of poor remuneration, judicial delays and lack of accountability has bred corruption in the legal establishment, and asks how it can be defeated … and by whom

The charges against him were damning, the proof clear, the scandal well-publicized. And yet, he essentially went unpunished.

It was the early 1990s, and India Supreme Court Justice V Ramaswami was charged with, among other things, spending roughly Rs5 million (US$117,000) of public money on carpets and furniture (purchased from handpicked dealers at highly inflated prices), during his earlier posting as chief justice of Punjab and Haryana High Court. The household goods were supposedly for his official high court residence, but were soon shipped to his personal home in Madras (now Chennai).

As outrage grew, a motion to impeach Ramaswami scored an impressive and unprecedented victory – it obtained the signatures of 100 members of parliament, the threshold needed to initiate impeachment procedures. This was, according to one expert, the first and only time in modern Indian history that this significant hurdle was cleared. But when Ramaswami’s impeachment came to an actual floor vote, members of the ruling Congress Party abstained, and the impeachment movement died a quick death.