The sixteen year vanvaas

(Retd.) Justice B.N. Srikrishna now spends most of his time as an arbitrator. Has the shift from being a judge to doing arbitration been easy? "It is something like doing the same thing as sitting in court and doing it at what the government paid me and now sitting outside the court and doing it at what I demand as my fees."

When asked if the legal fraternity itself is accepting alternate dispute resolution mechanisms, he said, "There are number of matters being sent to arbitration. The courts are overburdened, at the drop of a hat suggest mediation, conciliation, and arbitration and particularly when there are high stakes, which require long investigation, the judge will gladly sideline it and send it to an arbitrator."

We do not have institutions like I.C.C or the L.C.I. A. We have ad-hoc arbitrations. Places are hired where arbitration is conducted. It is conducted in a very professional manner, he said.

He also spoke about his use of technology. "In fact, when computers were not introduced in India I used to go abroad often and so I used to fiddle with it and was quite conversant in it by the time it came to India. I also took a course on computer programming. I wanted to do a programme on Panini's grammar. I promised myself I would do it after I retire."

Justice Srikrishna also spoke about how he incorporated technology into his work. "During the riots I had designed all kinds of statistical tables. Supposing I wanted to know how many people died of gun-shot wounds, out of them, how many were Hindu's, how may were Muslims, how many were of other religions. These kinds of statistical tables were useful."

(Retd.) Justice B.N. Srikrishna is perhaps the only retired judge who is active on social networking sites like Facebook. "Since I am not afraid of computers, and I have my own laptop, whenever I have time I get onto it just at what others are doing. When I was a judge these things were not there, these social sites were not popular or maybe my dignity as a judge, dignity of the office would have prevented me from entering into these sites. Now I am a free citizen of India. I enjoy interacting with people."

He is also one of the most easily approachable people. When asked what made him this approachable, he was quick to reply, "Why should I allow sixteen years of my life to change my personality? My personality before 1990 was that I was affable, I mixed with everyone, and I was connected to innumerable associations. Sixteen years was some kind of vanvaas for me."

Being an affable person, sixteen years spent as a judge were difficult and was a sort of a regiment that he had to follow. Shedding light on that, he said, "It is a regiment. Fortunately I did not have too much of trouble since I am not a club going man. Over the weekends I would be going to some function or the other to talk about philosophy, music, or the usual cutting the ribbon."

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