In its competitive elections, coalition politics, free press, and independent judiciary,
India‘s democracy may be considered exemplary by most institutional standards. And yet as anyone who has ever encountered the Indian state in its hospitals, schools, police
stations, local courts, electricity and water supply offices, or fair price shops would
vouch, something in the way institutional ideals translate into practice makes the
mechanics and the everyday experience of the state in India far from exemplary. There is
a disconnect between the formalist view of democracy and the substantive view. It is
often understood that sufficient conditions of a democratic society is not met in the Indian case. Social movements are born out of such perceptions, which challenge the state‘s claim to represent the ―people‖. While the state tries to integrate everyone into a Citizen (by elections) and a consumer (by market), the new social movements seek new social and governance space. Such movements have two markers, first, the focus of the movement is not to capture state power; and second, it dispels the myth of the ―vanguard‖ and is expressed in multiple sites, such as gender, ethnicity, caste, identity etc. The location of this struggle gives rise to the limits of the discourse, that is, what can be stated and by whom. This paper is an attempt at mapping the struggle between the legislature (the representatives of the People) and the Judiciary (the protectors of the people against a tyrannous state) during one of the most interesting phases of Indian nation. The bone of contention being the fundamental rights of the citizen as enshrined in the constitution.