Patriarchal Hegemony and the Quest for Women’s Justice: A Comparative Analysis of Local Judicial Mechanisms in Bangladesh, India and Nepal

In South Asia, there is an increasing trend to make justice accessible through local judicial mechanisms. South Asian states have come up with a new innovative idea to deliver justice through an institution which is less formalistic, less time-consuming, easily accessible and has a simple and summary legal procedure. The reason behind it is that the traditional courts are too bureaucratic, expensive, too complex and lengthy in procedure, not easily accessible and too formalistic. The Constitution of Nepal has envisioned a local justice dissemination mechanism to ensure effective and efficient access to justice at the grassroots level. This mechanism is known as the Judicial Committee, which has been given constitutional status under Article 217. In India, this mechanism has been given different connotations, for example, Gram Nayayalays, Sarpanch and so on, at the Panchayat level, whose spirit is envisioned in Articles 40 and 243 of the Indian Constitution. In Bangladesh, it is known as Village Court. The spirit of the Village Court is found in Article 9 of the Constitution of Bangladesh. This research article aims to measure how effective and efficient these local judicial mechanisms are in delivering justice to women. This research also aims to explore the link between the local judicial mechanism and access to justice and its relationship with the smooth delivery of justice dissemination at the village level. The study also sought to determine whether the Judicial Committee has improved access to justice for marginalised women in Nepal. For this, the constitutional and legal provisions of Bangladesh, India and Nepal have been compared and analysed to find the effect and impact upon the justice delivery system. In addition to normative analysis, a survey has been conducted to know the effectiveness and efficiency of the Judicial Committee in Nepal to triangulate the data with theory. Last, conclusions have been drawn regarding the accessibility of the Judicial Committee for women.