Who Is in Justice? Caste, Religion and Gender in the Courts of Bihar over a Decade
Bihar is widely regarded as one of India’s poorest and most divided states. It has also been the site of many social movements that have left indelible marks on the state’s politics and identity. Little is currently known about how structural inequ...
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| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2021
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/384061614260524872/Who-Is-in-Justice-Caste-Religion-and-Gender-in-the-Courts-of-Bihar-over-a-Decade http://hdl.handle.net/10986/35195 |
| Summary: | Bihar is widely regarded as one of
India’s poorest and most divided states. It has also been
the site of many social movements that have left indelible
marks on the state’s politics and identity. Little is
currently known about how structural inequalities have
affected the functioning of formal systems of justice in the
state. This paper uses a novel dataset of more than one
million cases filed at the Patna high court between 2009 and
2019 together with a variety of supplementary data to
analyze the role of religion, caste and gender in the high
court of Bihar. The analysis finds that the courts are not
representative of the Bihari population. Muslims, women and
scheduled castes are consistently under-represented. The
practice of using “caste neutral” names is on the rise.
Though there is little evidence of “matching” between judges
and petitioners or judges and filing advocates on the basis
of names, there is evidence that petitioners and their
advocates match on the basis of identity such as the use of
“caste neutral” names. These results suggest that the social
movements that disrupted existing social structures in the
past may have inadvertently created new social categories
that reinforce networks and inequalities in the formal
justice system. |
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