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Awareness about the constitution
To form a truly democratic society that knows to govern itself, awareness about the law is essential. Currently, not only is the average Indian is largely ignorant about the law that governs him, but also doesn't have easy means for accessing it when necessary. But the set Indian laws is huge and esoteric. So the only way to ensure maximum reach to the masses is to interpret the laws and represent it in simpler and lucid language. This will only enlarge the already huge set of India laws. But if the web can store Internet movie database, large collections of e-books and billions of e-mail accounts, it can store the diluted version of Indian laws too, that to in an easily search friendly manner. I think this initiative will be a huge step forward to create a democratic society. Is such an initiative already in place? If so where? If not, who can provide us access to the laws? Who can help digitize it? To find answers to all those questions I set out to search for information. Ended up finding many sites* that has information about Indian Penal Code, Constitution**, etc. But none of them is a one stop shop. I was looking for something on the lines of wikipedia.org where you can search based on keywords or tags. Also the website must be easily understandable to common people. Instead of being a mere repository of the laws, the website should have interpretations and anecdotes about the law and have pointers to the actual law. As an example you can view the page in Wikipedia on the topic - Indian Constitution. Even if there is no such website, there can be a society based solution similar to Wikipedia. The lawyer community including the law college Professors and students can come together and work towards creating such a database. Information creates awareness. Awareness creates well informed societies. A well informed society will be right on the path to prosperity. Creating the awareness to common people about the laws of the land in my opinion is an important step to create a well balanced and prosperous society. Thoughts welcome. * Constitution of India ** Indian Penal Code
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Anand, welcome to NGOpost.
Totally on board with your ideas on awareness, and the initiative you seek. The infrastructure aspect of it, as you point out, may already exist in the form of wikipedia.
Looks like there may be some money involved here (to pay someone who works on interpretation etc).
Also, another good source would be web-sites on RTI. I do remember that there is a repository of info already obtained from the Indian govt. after using RTI. It should be in one of the websites related to RTI.
http://www.indiarti.blogspot.com/
would be a good starting point.
Hi,
Anand completely agree with you, previously I have done couple of writeups on things like article 377 and so on. And I remember it was so difficult, because laws are written in such cryptic language that any normal individual would really find it difficult to understand.
As Badri pointed out, RTI websites might be a good idea.
Also I guess what is required is some blog/website like Indian constitution made simple. Because that full infrastructure is very complex.
Badri, wikipedia does not pay anyone to write articles. So building this website we are talking about is a pure open-initiative with contributions from interested people. The authenticity and accuracy is ensured by the experts in the subject matter. The only money aspect involved will be the setting up and maintenance cost.
Goli, I agree with you regarding the interpretation. We cannot aim for the perfect interpretation. The interpretation is subject to different scenarios. But the aim of this site is simple - create some awareness. For instance, a sample article on the website can be on Article nnn - talks about laws pertaining to some x situation or y actions, etc. So the obvious keywords or tags for the article will be x, y, article nnn. So for people interested in this can look it up. At the end of the article we can have pointers to the actual script of the law and other case files (if any existed).
a wikipedia by lawyers sounds an excellent idea, if the lawyers do participate! a somewhat sub-optimal solution - I remember seeing a website where anyone could post queries and someone from a community of volunteer lawyers would answer. The "business" model was that information was free but you could further hire a lawyer for your legal proceedings. if the archives of such discussions are searchable, maintained, & well-classified online, they could become as helpful resources as the many linux & OSS forums!
this need is not specific to any country and would be good to know what are the global best practices! Afaik, even in US, there is no one-stop shop, you have to go the website of the respective departments where the information is explained in a relatively simple way.
Hello all,
Interesting discussion and good points. My personal experience says getting a site up and ready would be the easiest thing to do. It is the content - its quality and organization that would be a task.
Requirements from such a repository:
1. Easy searchability - our constitution is big. The design of the website should be in the form of a multi dimensional matrix with classification on the basis of Penal Code, types of disputes etc. One idea could be to use tags that we normally do in blogs- but ensure that the tags are pre-decided and not arbitrary.
2. Availability in multiple languages - once you have a a particular part decoded you do not necessarily need a lawyer to do the translation in other languages. A good translator would do.
3. Unambiguity - The aim of the website is to present the law in a lucid manner.
4. A blog may be part of the site but not the site.
5. Use technology to make the site as user-friendly as possible. An unwieldy site dies soon.
A few things that I thought of.
I think the wikipedia link -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_constitution
itself can be updated as you mention with good many links and be a single point to start off (wikipedia is usually a good place to start off! :)).
Anand,
I doubt if any lawyer, professor or a law student would worry about simplifying the law for the website we are setting up if they are not paid (unless group is socially very active, which is likely to be a minority).
Anyway, this is a problem that we can solve when we get to it. If you are interested in getting the website up shortly, it is probably a good idea to start of with the RTI website (as I said earlier).
Further, it would also be a good idea to get hold of someone had the opportunity (misfortune actually! :) ) to go the court of law to get a feel of how difficult it was for them to understand the law, how they went about it finally and things like that. That may give an idea.
Badhri, strange that you make that point when you are working in the software field. The world is talking about Web 2.0 which is nothing but user generated content.
There are umpteen examples of open source and free software projects that are industrial quality.
The knack is to harness that repository of information - for free, at least mostly - that is walking out there and organize it on the website
Don't know if we are digressing off the topic, but I am not sure how many of those user-generated content are lawyers of the Indian court of law or law college professors and students.
My perception of them is
- they mostly spend their time @ court, hence don't spend most of their time in front of computer
- the whole lawyer community in India by itself breeds on carelessness and inertia. Just to (probably) confirm BBC latest news podcast ran a news on how millions (yes millions!) of the cases are pending for over a decade and reported how judges are careless and beyond scrutiny.
Of course I am not comfortable with this thought. If I am wrong, and as you say there are enthusiastic law students and professors who can jump in do the job out of sheer interest, I am only glad! :)
I will get my head into this and try to find a blogger or a wordpresser who is a lawyer or a law student! How is that!
>> - the whole lawyer community in India by itself breeds on carelessness and inertia.
Just to clarify. I don't have any thing against lawyers, but that is my first-cut perception based on what I see in media and other impersonal means. This perception isn't based on proper research and realize the possibility it is likely to be wrong (in fact I hope it is wrong!).
Okay, we have a situation at hand. The issues with judiciary are a matter of discussion of another thread. Millions of pending cases cannot just be alluded to a callous judiciary. Getting back to the topic, this is one blog I read regularly and though I cannot vouch that people here are lawyers, they do have a legal bent.
http://lawandotherthings.blogspot.com/
The blog also has many links to judiciary related sites.
Will update if I find more such sites.
For my part, I found an orkut community of Law students and aluminis and spray around the following questions to a bunch of members and got a response
"Hi,
Sorry for this unsolicited scrap. But I found you from the Law community in Orkut and have a question on related topic. I need the opinion from some one in the law community.
A friend of mine suggested to have a database of the set of Indian Laws (IPC etc..) online in a form similar to Wikipedia. In my friends vision, the database
- will put the laws in simpler language that is easily understandable to common man
- will interpret the laws (may be provide examples of what cases the law is applied)
- will be in multiple Indian languages
My question is, will he be able to find some group of lawyers, law students, lecturers or professors who would be willing to interpret the law, simplify it and post it to that website? Main point is, there is no money to pay!
If so, where?
Thanks and again sorry for the unsolicited scrap.
I have posted this in Orkut of one person in law community. "
Answer:
"the best way is to tie up with some law colleges to get this work done as this is at free of cost"
Will update more as and when I get replies.
When I was thinking about this idea, the only way to get the content ready is if we harness the energy and time of the students aspire to be lawyers. That's when you have pure aspirations (and in most cases find out reality doesn't match what they envisioned within those college campus walls). Working on this site will be useful for them in many ways and at the same time benefiting the public.
So as a first step finding a small group of writers will be the first step towards getting this work off the ground.
Badri thanks for posting the email on the orkut community. And thanks to all of your time and inputs.
Will do a part-2 of the post on what I had in my mind when I did the initial post.
Hi all, please pour in your ideas on how to get the infrastructure for this project. This project for sure will require huge amounts of server space. Securing the server space and user a/c management is one of the initial items in my to-do list. This work has to happen in parallel while we try to get people from the law community to gather around this effort.
Since in this case, the focus is on content and the technical requirements are not extra-ordinary, I would recommed using a hosted wiki service, such as PBWiki or WetPaint, so that you can create your wiki instantly and freely, and don't have to worry about servers/hosting/managing, but instead can focus fully on getting users and content. I think these sites are fairly reliable and useful, and will provide almost all functionality that you may need for this project.
See http://www.pbwiki.com and http://www.wetpaint.com, or Google sites (sites.google.com).
http://www.pilsarc.org/Aboutus.aspx
An excerpt from their Introduction
"The need was felt for an institution to facilitate access to the formal legal system and to act as a conduit for social action groups, popular and mass movements and marginalised communities."
This is the website that I said contains all docs in relation to RTI.
http://www.rtiindia.org/forum/4632-right-information-directory-store-sha...
I have also made a post on this website recently in NGO post
http://ngopost.org/story.php?title=Know_about_RTI_Want_to_know_details_J...
Had a quick look at the site..but apart form "Home" "About us" and "Contact us" no other links work. May be Anand can call them or mail them
Aishmishra shared two good websites on related subject.
http://www.helplinelaw.com/
http://www.legalserviceindia.com/
Thanks 'Aishmishra' and 'Badri'. The first link (http://www.helplinelaw.com/) resembles kind of what I had in my mind. Seems like it lacks explanation and pointers to the actual script of the law.
Film Screening & Discussion on Indian Legal System, Dec 13, Ahmedabad
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=201336583362
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Also, FYI: http://www.karmayog.org/legalresources/
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