Much of my summer has been about navigating Indian politics, of my office, of certain local state governments, and of the country at large.

There are about 60 or so people at my office, including lawyers, social workers, grant writers, interns, IT staff, secretaries, chai brewers, cleaners, security guards, etc. Work, particularly legal work, isn’t just handed to interns, especially for a gora like me. You have to have the right amount of assertiveness to breach the communication and cultural barriers, and a month into the job I’m still getting the hang of it.

This week, I went on a fact-finding mission concerning sex trafficking in a very poor and rural state bordering Delhi. Our informants turned out to be aspiring politicians, they led us to certain areas of the village to kind of get a sense of the problem, but not to get any substantive information for effective public interest litigation; essentially, these politicians just wanted to get good press and drum up demagogic support. The level of exploitation of these poor trafficked women, directly and indirectly, is still difficult to process.

Much of the work that my organization does is direct impact litigation. Since the 1980s, in India, any person (including non-lawyers) may sue the government on behalf of an individual or group who has been deprived of fundamental or legal rights (e.g. standing is not required). On most issues, the High and Supreme courts are very progressive, but the trouble is that pro-human rights decisions fail to get implemented by the proper authorities, so NGOs continue to sue in order to hold officials accountable and slowly progress is made, or at the very least, awareness is raised.

It’s been really interesting reading about everyone’s experiences, and I hope everyone updates at the end of the summer. David, you may want to try working in India, lawyers and judges value the verbose here. An opinion I read the other day, which upheld a challenge to the death penalty (Bachan Singh), had references to Albert Camus, Harvey Milk, various deceased US Supreme Court Justices, and Jean Valjean (of Les Mis).

-- EricaSelig - 19 Jun 2010