OFTEN lauded as Indian ingenuity, jugaad is, in reality, simply people finding ways to cope with inefficient systems. This article examines the ‘slip culture’ jugaad, a response of advocates in Kerala's trial courts to trial courts’ inefficient court management practices.
On my first day as an advocate at my firm, I was sent to the district court in Ernakulam to get a case adjourned. Even though this was an easy task, the prospect of appearing before a judge for the first time made me nervous. Clutching the heavy case file, I reached the court hall early and was muttering to myself the two lines I had to say to request the adjournment.
As I stood there, rehearsing in my head, another advocate approached and asked if I would be present in that courtroom for a while. I nodded and said yes. She immediately thrust a neatly cut, square piece of paper into my hand and told me to just say, “For the respondent.”
Before I could explain that it was my first day in court and that I did not fully understand what she was saying, she had already rushed out of the court hall. When I took a look at the paper, it had the case number, a brief note about the submission to be made before the court, the name of the court in an abbreviated form, and the name and phone number of an advocate written on it.
I understood that I was supposed to say “For the respondent” when the case was called. Still uncertain about whether I could make a submission on a case I knew nothing about based on the instructions of an advocate I had never met, I decided to ask a nearby lawyer for guidance. She assured me that this was a common practice.
As I started to regularly appear before the trial courts in Ernakulam, Kerala, I came to understand that this was indeed a regular feature of courtroom life. Junior lawyers and clerks often dashed between courtrooms, handling these slips to advocates.
