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Book Review: Fifteen Judgements – Cases That Shaped India’s Financial Landscape

By Saurabh Kirpal

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The modern concept of Economics is more towards the economic landscape being more of a political economy, given the advent of tariffs, regulations, trading blocs, and more – combined with the need to balance environment, and the need to balance the needs of various internal subgroups of citizens. This has tended to intertwine the political, regulatory, and economic sectors completely together in a conjoint situation, perhaps for the best. Just in the recent past, there have been many instances when the judiciary has adjudicated / called upon to adjudicate on many aspects of this political economy. The current book under review looks at 15 such seminal cases.
 
What The Book Examines
These 15 cases are those that have had, or, in the more recent examples taken the potential to have, a lasting impact on the direction and, in some ways, structure of the Indian Economy. As I not not a trained lawyer, I will refrain from the legal aspects – but suffice it to state that reading this book gives an Indian a tremendous sense of satisfaction in our democracy, judiciary and our executive. Respect to all concerned, and especially the author for bringing these to our attention.
 
Other Aspects
The book examines some fundamental underpinnings to the structure, nature of the Economy in India. It covers aspects such as the zamindari matter which had a significant impact on rural land holding, to the bank nationalization aspect – and more. It looks at matters related to industrial relations, women in the workplace, the entire telecom imbroglio in 3 separate cases, takeovers, the environment, Aadhaar & privacy, the Insolvency and Bankruptcy act case, and closing with a superb examination of the cryptocurrency case of recent times.
 
The Economy Link
Any functional modern economy has several layers to it – domestic participants who undertake activities to generate revenue, provide jobs and economic prosperity; foreign participants by way of partners, investors, shareholders, influence groups and more; thirdly, you have the layer of the regulatory bodies who determine the regulations that manage these activities. Then you have the policy and administrative framework that assists, manages and governs economic activity. Fourth is the layer of the executive that creates and amends the laws and regulations with a view to govern all of this. And this brings me to the second aspect of the fourth layer, the judiciary which adjudicates disputes and addresses concerns of the other layers. No economy can hope to function without all of these participants  working in tandem. And this is perhaps the key aspect of the Indian Economy – all of these, despite the seeming chaos, clearly have learnt, over time, to work in tandem towards a higher common goal of the common good of the people of India.
 
But this book is about so much more than mere cases related to financial and economic matters. It brings to the fore facts, though in the public domain, were not in front of us in one place. It highlights the balance [and the need for such a balance] between the various roles in the regulatory, policy, and executive and judicial layers of the economic structure of a nation. It highlights the roles of these layers, and through this we come to realise, not without intense pride on our part while reading, how this overall  structure has served India so well. It is this that enables us to stand out as an investment and global destination of note in the world, rising above most emerging markets, our seeming chaos and well-advertised problems notwithstanding. We can, and should, be a lot more proud of what we have achieved. This shows how and why India is a land where the rule of law reigns, where the principles of good rule apply, and where the various participants and layers have learnt to function together.
 
Conclusion
I am not a lawyer, so have refrained from any position on the legal aspects presented, the arguments, counter arguments, and the judgement analyses, or the aftermath of the cases that has been superbly analysed. That is for legal experts. From my view, if you want to understand, or get a glimpse into the various layers of Indian economic structure, this is one book for you. If you want to undertand how we got where we are now, in terms of the overall economic structure, spanning disinvestment, privitisation, telecom, digital and crypto, IBC and more – this book takes you deep into these matters, and leaves you a wiser person who is richer for the knowledge thus gained.