At the Supreme Court's 75th anniversary celebrations on Wednesday, Supreme Court Bar Association President Kapil Sibal proudly announced that on his appeal a handful of India's top industrialists had written checks totaling Rs 50 crore so that lawyers registered with SCBA can have free, cashless health insurance up to the tune of Rs 2 lakh each.
On the face of it, it may seem like an innocuous, even laudatory act. But if one thinks hard, it marks a deeply troubling moment for the legal profession in the country. In many ways, it's also a stark indictment of the rapidly eroding standards in India's public life.
For generations of lawyers, legal idealism and the Indian Constitution have remained their true north. In our constitutional democracy, lawyers have played a vital role in upholding the rule of law and defending individual liberties and freedoms. The likes of Nani Palkhivala, MC Setalvad, CK Daphtary, and Shanti Bhushan not only set high standards for professional ethics and advocacy; they also influenced the course of our constitutional law and its evolution. It is therefore essential that the legal profession must neither be beholden to big capital nor reliant on state patronage.
What message does SCBA's act of seeking crumbs off the plate of India's filthy rich send to the ordinary litigants who turn to the Supreme Court as the ultimate forum for justice and relief? That even the lawyers practicing at the highest court of the land must rely on the generosity of the ultra-wealthy to secure ₹2 lakh in annual health coverage? That the haloed profession is dependent on the charity of those who are most entangled with the legal system?
Telling selection
The selection of industrialists approached for this so-called charity is telling. Some of the corporate groups involved here rank among the most frequent and influential litigants before the Supreme Court.
Many of these benefactors regularly face judicial and public scrutiny—often standing on the opposite side of legal battles against project-displaced people, farmers, public interest litigants, or vulnerable communities. This sort of chumminess between the legal profession and the most powerful corporate litigants cannot be healthy for the profession or for the system of justice itself.
Poor litigants already hold a very dim view of the justice system. Many believe that justice is not delivered but bought. When important emblems of the justice system—like the SCBA—appear to be dependent on handouts from select powerful industrialists, it would further deepen the commonly-held skepticism in the justice delivery system.
Ironically, the bar council of India's rules lays much stress on the independence of lawyers. We are perhaps the only country in the world that doesn't allow law professors to practice law in the courts. The rationale is that salaried employment compromises a lawyer's independence and their ability to act with undivided loyalty to a client or the court.
Seen in this light, how disturbing it is that the profession as a whole is parading its financial vulnerability to the point of seeking donations. And that too from industrialists who, because of the nature and extent of their business activities, are among the highest-paying clients, involved in multiple litigations, and deal in regulated and core sectors directly affecting the common man.
Chump change that lays bare a harsh truth
It's also important to put the total sum of ₹50 crore donated by two Ambanis, Adani, Birla, Mittal, Mehta of Torrent Group, and Agarwal of Vedanta Group in perspective.
It is 1% of what Mukesh Ambani recently spent (approximately ₹5,000 crore) on the wedding of his youngest son, Anant Ambani. It is 0.5% of ₹10,000 crore that Gautam Adani pledged for social causes during his son Jeet's wedding. It is a fraction of the total amount of electoral bonds the Vedanta Group purchased between April 2019 and January 2024.
The point is that Rs 5 crore or 10 crore of donation is chump change for these industrialists.
On the other hand, the integrity and independence of the legal profession are priceless. The bar and the bench are sacred pillars on which the credibility of the justice system rests. Therefore, the act of seeking donations from a select few corporate groups to fund a health insurance scheme for lawyers undermines the sanctity of a profession that has been at the vanguard of India's independence, its constitutional founding, and its democratic framework.
It also tells of the dangerous place we have arrived at as a nation—the extreme concentration of power and wealth in the hands of a few. The inequality of wealth and income has reached such extreme proportions that elite philanthropy is seen as a normal substitute for state welfarism and social protections. When even institutions like SCBA become dependent on donations from the billionaires, it signals something far deeper: the creeping monopolisation by big capital of the society itself.
Beyond reflecting the broader wealth inequality in general, this move also underscores the deep disparities and dysfunctionalities within the administration of the legal profession itself. The annual premium for a ₹2 lakh health insurance policy typically ranges from ₹4,000 to ₹6,500 per year. The fact that SCBA members are expected to be grateful for donations that merely save them a few thousand rupees in annual insurance premiums lays bare a harsh truth: only a small section of lawyers earn substantial fees, while the rest struggle.
Lack of a level-playing field and some vital questions
There is a lack of a level-playing field between established legal chambers and newcomers. To a large extent, the legal practice, especially in the Supreme Court, is clannish. A small group of senior advocates dominates high-stakes litigation, often taking on dozens of briefs each week, crowding out junior advocates. Volumes have been written critiquing elitism, exclusion, and influence-driven selections of designation of 'Senior Advocates.' Judges, too, are mostly selected from a narrow pool of senior lawyers.
The conflict of interest among senior advocates is rampant. Unlike in many foreign jurisdictions, leading lawyers in India often represent the same client in one case and then appear against them in another—sometimes on the very same day. Many leading lawyers are openly aligned with political parties, some even are Rajya Sabha members. Some have kept on switching roles as advocates, parliamentarians, and party spokespersons. This casts a serious shadow over their allegiance to the profession and their duty to the court.
India also does not have a legal culture strongly promoting pro bono work by the top lawyers and elite law firms. On the other hand, most foreign jurisdictions, like the US, the UK, Australia, and Canada, either greatly encourage or mandate pro bono work.
At several elite law firms in the US—like Skadden, Sullivan & Cromwell, and WilmerHale—pro bono work is valued equally with billable hours in performance evaluations. More than a handout from India's richest few, the legal profession in general and the SCBA in particular need systemic reforms.
Shouldn't SCBA ask its leading lights to compulsorily take certain hours of pro bono work every week? Shouldn't SCBA debate policy questions like limits on the number of briefs a senior advocate can take in a week? These are important policy questions that need to be discussed. SCBA should also lay out a strong legal ethics framework for its members, with the most senior lawyers leading the way.
Grave error of judgment
Bar associations should be built around institutional funding, member dues, and endowments for public-interest programs—not private solicitations from powerful business houses. It would be unthinkable for the American Bar Association (ABA) or the New York State Bar Association (NYSBA) to publicly seek donations from Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, or Warren Buffett to fund basic welfare schemes like health insurance for lawyers.
The SCBA has shown a grave error of judgment in seeking donations from a few corporate honchos. It would have been better had the SCBA and its president focused more on democratising, reforming, and strengthening the legal profession.
The SCBA should immediately return the Rs 50 crore. Else, it would leave a lasting stain on the profession. If medical insurance is such a pressing need, the top 10 highest-paid lawyers can donate the fees from their five individual appearances, and the corpus would most probably cross Rs 50 crore. As they say, charity begins at home.
(Ashish Khetan is an Indian lawyer and journalist. Views are personal.)
