This institutional undermining of the bar of the highest courthas proceeded over the last several years during which national political parties have come to play a dominant role in these elections through their legal cells. Accordingly recent controversies concerning the Chief Justices of India and judges have resulted in massive mobilisation of votes within the bar with certain senior advocates armed with cellphones communicating results instantly. The sane and warning voice of a senior advocate, who seems to be the last of the genre that still crafts an argument with his pencil word by word, goes unheeded in the process. He has always maintained that the bar is giving up the public trust of ensuring a proper judiciary for the nation.

The bar today has no specialised cell on each subject of law headed by advocates from within it who are masters of that particular area of knowledge. Hence the strength of the bar no longer lies in the quintessential quality of a lawyer -- knowledge. It has no subject wise publications analysing nationally what is happening to that areaof knowledge in various high courts and the Supreme Court. If there was this culture of knowledge, the bar could have its own list of able and worthy judges. This would automatically lead it to computer-telecom networking with the high courts in the country so that its members could study high court judgments quickly.

Similarly, there is no study of proposed legislation, the implementation of Supreme Court judgments and the international movement of knowledge that makes legal inputs even in the highest court outdated by almost a decade. Accordingly, the bar as an institution is unable to stand up in any international forum to put forth the Indian point of view on trade, arbitration or human rights law, simply for the reason that it has no point of view in the absence of structures of study. Inter-disciplinary lawyers who can explain whole economic processes by straddling various areas of law are almost non-existent. The bar's contribution to national legal education and proper court and appointmentstructures is nil.

But all this comes only if the bar as an institution supports the use of law in public service as an effective parallel to the private market of lawyering which must necessarily be in support of the small percentage of the rich and powerful. Elected office bearers along with influential private market lawyers have captured the policy-making fora of legal aid and legal research. The fact that judges control these fora and the its appointments bespeaks the powerlessness of the bar as an institution not only nationally but also internationally in terms of the Indo-British or the Indo-American legal forums.

If the majority of the judiciary in the district courts suffers by the way the high courts manage the lower court, if judges can go off to national or international functions during the working of the court, if the criminal and civil justice systems are being turned into a negation of justice, if legal aid, public interest litigation and suo motu jurisdictions are not doing anything fora country entering the millennium with millions of disabled and illiterate children, if courts are increasingly telling lawyers that they will not implement what the Supreme Court has laid down, then the bar should be concerned. But its senior advocates who should provide the lead in these areas do not. Courts today are indifferent to a well-drafted, mediocre or a badly-drafted petition. The nexus between earning and quality has been broken. The SCBA is indifferent to the suffering of the people, knowledge and integrity of its own members as well as the quality of the judiciary.

Meanwhile in celebration it has been effectively taken over by the parallel Advocates on Record Association which launched the grandest golden jubilee celebrations by getting the vice-president to the court premises, all the apex court judges (sitting and retired) and conducted moot courts for law students. Will the new SCBA president be able to rejuvenate the bar by which its members can speak reasoned truth without the fear ofeconomic reprisals? On that depends the fate of law -- reimagined, reconfigured and rescued from money power alone. Since lawyers do not know what they are voting for, April 29 is a blind date with the SCBA's millennium to decide about the survival of sincere, hard working lawyers as well as judges desperately trying to give a human face to the law.