The review article critically analyses the perspectives offered by various authors on the concepts of justice and equality. Rajeev Bhargava and others examine how literary sensibilities in distinct cultural contexts perceive justice and highlight some contemporary demands by those denied justice in the social order. Kunal Chakravarty designates the Brahmanical jurisprudential order as one of the `natural inequality'. Yet he hastens to refer to the presence of countervailing perspectives. The invidious distinction between white-collar and blue-collar crimes often assumes pernicious proportions. Witness the stark fact that while crimes like murder and treason are punished by death, colossal crimes in business dealings do not fall under the same category of capital offences. Najaf Haider confines himself to an analysis of Islamic juridical notions and barely covers the Indian context. Roma Chatterji observes that slums are alternative housing realities and should no longer be viewed as eye-sores to be eliminated, while Satyajit Singh focuses on the problem of `Water'. The paradox of water is that a natural gift sustaining life is now rendered scarce. Vidhu Verma points out that there is a transformation in the nature of `Justice' discourse. While the old distributive justice claims continue, the debate has shifted to demands for equality irrespective of caste, gender and tribe. Virginius Xaxa is a concise though descriptive account of the manifest denial of justice to the tribal communities in India.

Dusche offers a theoretical framework on the origin of the concept of JUSTICE, and how it came to vary across time and place in the evolution of juristic ideas. He explains how Rawls theorising of justice is to be traced to the logician, Nelson Goodman's exposition of the notion of `reflective equilibrium' in his Fact, Fiction and Forecast. It results out of a process wherein, humankind first intuitively conceives ethical (and juridical) ideas which, in their turn lead to `hypothesis of interpretation' and textual elaborations. Goodman's `original position' comprises ethical propositions, whereas those of Rawls are in the nature of moral judicial norms intuitively arrived at by the members of various communities and universally shared. The theorising or textualising occurs through reflection on the `original position'. But, why and how do the `reflected' norms assume varied and often conflicting shapes in different cultures? The transformation from universality in the original position to patent diversity calls for explanation, which indeed is a challenge. It is here that Dusche's analysis is inadequate. He could have referred to the Historical and Sociological schools of legal theory. For example, Morris Ginsberg squarely dealt with this problem. Dusche is too preoccupied with the very recent theories.

The primordial position of Rawls is that `Fairness' is the original disposition shared by all and that, it is all the more characteristic of democratic societies. His juristic maxim `Justice as Fairness' is based almost solely upon the basic intuitive idea that is much more accessible for recovery in polities of democratic nature. Yet many democratic societies still uphold practices grossly violating the plain meaning of fairness. Even so the consolation is that democratic societies at least acknowledge that the true implication of fairness is equality not only before the law but also in the content of the law. Rawls concepts of `wide and full' equilibrium are promotable in democratic societies.

Governance And Public Policy Journal, Justice, Tribal Communities, Islamic Juridical Notions, Ethical Propositions, Democratic Societies, Brahmanical Jurisprudential Order, Blue-Collar Crimes, Non-Islamic Sources, Judicial Processes, Agricultural Productivity.