From listening to The Police Band to going to an Indian Courthouse...

The past few days were very interesting. Last night SDM-IMD invited us to their campus to watch The Police Band do a performance at their amphitheatre. I thought the music was pretty good. The first 30 minutes the microphone was on too loud and it gave off a squeaky sound for one of the flutes. But after that I really enjoyed it. I think my dad would have loved it because he loves classical music, and to me it could have been categorized as 'Indian classical music'. A picture is shown below of the band.
















Following that, me, drew, and felix went out for some good old American Pizza at Pizza Corner. It was nice to have this meal just because I needed a little break from Indian food. The items on the menu amazed me how similar they were to a Pizza Hut. Even the inside of the restaurant looked very similar to an American Pizza parlor. Once again, to refer to Thomas L. Friedman's book The World is Flat, "globalization 3.0" is definitely here. Another example is when me and felix got back from the hotel and watched some American HBO.

The next day we had a lecture on the Indian Legal System by Mr. Shivakumar who for me was by the far, the most interesting presenter. The only problem I had with the lecture, was that time went too fast. Mr. Shivakumar was a very knowledgeable guy, answering our questions without any hesitation. Below is some information that he gave us just to give you a taste of what we heard:

• India's law is a rights based system
• The hierarchy of courts in India start from Munsiff Court (court sees cases up to $5000 similar to small claims court) then to Civil Judge (court sees cases of anything above $5000) and finally to a District Court.
• Abortions can't happen in India based on someone's personal will, it can only occur for health reasons that might harm pregnant mother if she continues with the pregnancy
• Marriage Laws differ based on someone's religion (Christian's follow different divorce laws than Hindu's follow)
• Intellectual Property rights are very weak in India. There is no protection because it is impossible to track the source.
• There is also no data protection laws (someone can get your credit card information technically)
• Lawyers don't disclose earnings, even the tax record doesn't because so many lawyers pocket their cash. Being Indian we are constantly reminded how obsessed Indians are with wealth, power, and status which is why you would think Lawyers would share their earnings with everyone. >

As you can see, we were really lucky to have Mr. Shivakumar come in and speak with us.

After his presentation, we went to the Mysore Courthouse which was really interesting to see. One thing I noticed immediately was how many people were just hanging out there. It was interesting too see because in America the last place people would go to hang out would be a courthouse. We first went to a really small court room where a case regarding income taxes was going on. Although I couldn't understand the language, just being in the room observing everyone and the broken windows really gave me enough to experience how different the Indian legal system is from the American legal system. Although both require you to be pretty formal, I would say the Indian courthouse even requires you to be more formal. You have to bow your head to the judge when you enter the courthouse and exit the courthouse. Also, it was interesting because there was a huge table in the room for lawyers listening to the case and looking through court materials that sometimes weren't even directly related to the case. After our first case we briefly listened to, we toured the grounds a little and went to a second court case where it was a bigger matter involving a debtor/creditor money lending situation. Again, this was very interesting to see even though I couldn't understand the language. Below is a picture of the law courts in Mysore.