No one can disagree with the idea that arrears should not exist. But having said that the first problem that arises is the definition of arrears. Till today the apex court has not given any publicly known definition which necessarily has to be based on classes of cases and the degree of suffering involved or the public interest element at stake. In the absence of such an exercise there is no institutional norm on the issue of arrears. Hence when one speaks of arrears at the apex court one does know the topic but not its implications for the public. This explains why even now one finds appeals ten to fifteen years old being disposed of in 1999. The veil ofsecrecy put by the apex court on its working and statistics ensures that no fair and objective assessment is possible.

That is directly related to the condition of the bar at the apex court which has completely failed to create structures of institutional thinking, reflection and improvement on the touchstone of public interest. Consequently the bar does not demand that the case pendency situation on death, jail, matrimonial, landlord-tenant, revenue and environment matters be displayed on a board for all to know where exactly the court stands. Or that the same data in terms of entry of the case into the court and its exit be put up or be made available in the form of the classes of cases formulated by the apex court for purposes of filing of matters. There is a palpable fear of raising critical issues among the official and unofficial leaders of the bar vying extremely hard to be seen close to the judges even as these leaders organise public flattery as an effective weapon of public relationslawyering.

As this public message unfortunately travels across to the corporate sector, there is no thinking from the bar on the methods or methodology of justicing to ensure the public interest. The judicial method of not formulating the monetary public loss due to a stay order in revenue matters till the disposal of the case, of not taking into account wider areas of knowledge that the world has developed in the last two decades while examining the impact of a law and of not affixing responsibility of public officials in the handling of cases, still continues.

In the absence of any partnership of knowledge and public service, such is the competition in the bar to be seen next to judges that elections to bar offices have become areas of massive organised financial investment and forums like legal aid have become avenues for many to capture official posts without any track record of service in that area. This has given rise to an increasing number of lawyer associations with the sole objective of playingthis kind of effective role both nationally and internationally.

Fifty years have seen a remarkable growth of celebration of judges. From farewells for judges we have travelled to welcome parties, from bar-organised fu-nctions to an increasing number of private lunches and dinners, from judicial distance of lawyer-leaders to judicial closeness with them accompanied by more and more of gifting and eating, from judicial blessing to personal functions at lawyers' houses. It is indeed difficult for such lawyers to establish a public critique of the apex court's functioning or to support the judge who innovates, who sets new sights even as he silently suffers the daily grind of the case load.

Hence computerisation and classification are glorified as the solution to arrears but the unfortunate judicial methods adopted in disposing of cases so computerised and classified remains a silent area. The judicial techniques in the environmental and hawala cases have been a landmark in the wholesale abandonment ofjudicial demeanour, discipline and discourse. The manner of dealing with habeas corpus matters from those of Sant Longowal to the recent cases from Pu-njab is an unhappy chapter.

The effectiveness of the apex court's orders is an area as troublesome as the transparency of judges before and after appointments. But in the market of PRO-lawyering and legal business theseissues are logically excluded.

Fifty years of constitutional governance through the courts and then judicial management of the judiciary leave haunting questions about courts, judges, the state of the legal profession and their relationship with children who inherit the next millennium.

A fundamental-rights apex court running a publicly funded national legal aid scheme without any fundamental relationship to the illiterate and disabled children is a fifty years contradiction of the Constitution. Two volumes of the IIM Ahmedabad on court management, paid for by the apex court, are gathering dust, along with a volume on Supreme Court officeprocedures prepared and printed by the Chief Justice of India.