A Delhi High Court judge, her two children and a cascade of government briefs have opened a window onto three uncomfortable truths about India's higher judiciary: the persistence of family advantage, the opacity of empanelment, and the enduring dominance of a tiny demographic slice. HYDERABAD On paper, Justice Swarana Kanta Sharma's elevation to the Delhi High Court in March 2022 was unremarkable. A career judicial officer who had risen from magistrate at twenty-four to sessions judge and later Special Judge in CBI cases, her appointment followed a conventional trajectory. What followed was less conventional. Within two years of her elevation, both her son Ishaan Sharma and daughter Shambhavi Sharma had secured empanelment as Central Government panel counsels — positions that grant access to a steady and lucrative stream of government briefs. Public records and RTI data cited in court proceedings suggest that Ishaan Sharma, who completed his law degree in 2017 and began pract...
Many banks and microfinance companies claim that they treat everyone equally. But research shows something very different. Even when people from different castes have the same income, same land, and same education , a big part of the difference in who gets loans cannot be explained . This unexplained gap is because of statistical discrimination — lenders assume someone is “high‑risk” just because of their caste, not because of their actual financial situation. This problem is even worse in microfinance. Studies show that about 66% of Dalit applicants are rejected , even when they meet the same conditions as others. There is also a difference between how Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs) are treated. SCs face general discrimination. STs face a special kind of bias: even when they apply, their approval rate is only around 77% , while other groups get 85–88% approval. A lot of this discrimination becomes hidden inside algorithms used by lenders. These systems are ...