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Decision Making as Output and Bounded Rationality

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  The classical economics theories proceed on the assumption of rational agents. Rationality implies the economic agents undertake actions or exercise choices based on the cost-benefit analysis they undertake. The assumption further posits that there exists no information asymmetry and thus the agent is aware of all the costs and benefits associated with the choice he or she has exercised. The behavioral school contested the decision stating the decisions in practice are often irrational. Implied there is a continuous departure from rationality. Rationality in the views of the behavioral school is more an exception to the norm rather a rule. The past posts have discussed the limitations of this view by the behavioral school. Economics has often posited rationality in the context in which the choices are exercised rather than theoretical abstract view of rational action. Rational action in theory seems to be grounded in zero restraint situation yet in practice, there are numerous restra
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Indian Judiciary and Pending Cases

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  A recent tweet by LawBeat puts out an interesting perspective on the cases before the judiciary. It quotes the Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad as stating there were nearly 67000 cases pending before the Supreme Court. If one were to take the cases pending before the High Courts, there would be 58 lakh pending cases. Given there are 25 High Courts in the country, an average of more than two lakh cases are pending before each High Court. If one were to dig deeper and look at the lower courts- primarily the District Courts- the number touches around 3.3 crores. The number is expected to increase with passage of time rather than decrease. This virtually implies there is very little time for each court to sit and adjudicate on the cases and perhaps even lesser time to write judgment on those cases. Assuming Supreme Court to sit around 200 days per year, they have to handle 300+ cases per day of their sitting to dispose of the current pending cases and on an assumption of accepting no fr
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Judiciary and Hindu Sentiments: Some Notes

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  A couple of judicial orders relating to freedom of expression and Article 32 among others attracted attention in the last few days. There was show ‘Tandav’ which apparently showed Hindu gods in a poor light. This naturally led to an out roar and leading to filing of complaints. The actors and producers and writers of the show were complained about. As police registered FIRs at multiple places, these grieved parties approached the Supreme Court for stay on the FIRs and anticipatory bail for the same. The Supreme Court refused any interim protection. Similarly in Madhya Pradesh, a stand-up comedian and his team were arrested for allegedly hurting the Hindu sentiments in their show. They approached the High Court for bail which rejected the same. These two issues have again opened up the wide debate on the freedom of expression and the limits that apply to it.   Unlike in the US where the freedom of expression is absolute, freedom of expression in India is subject to reasonable rest
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