In this series of posts, we review the recently circulated report titled "Changing Face of Arbitration in India". Frankly, I didn't expect such a report to be authored under the aegis of an entity (Ernst & Young) that specialises in "assurance, tax, transaction and advisory services." Such a study should have been conducted by a the Law Firms or the academia. In any case, the report is probably the first-of-its-kind that is at least accessible. The report is very short- spabout 13-14 pages if one chooses to exclude the graphics.
The survey, the report states, was conducted by receiving online feedback from 68 respondents and interviews of six eminent personalities. The six personalities constituted partners of firms such as Zia Mody, Pramod Nair, Matthew Gearing etc. It is surprising that arbitration counsels (or atleast those who appear before arbitral tribunals regularly) were not included in the list of eminent personalities although advocates are included in the sixty eight respondents category. At p. 17 of the report, the profiles of the respondents are described. A problem with the profiles being depicted in the form of percentages is that the number of respondents were relatively small (68) for a survey research of this kind. It would have been better to have them depicted in numbers as well. We have attempted to convert the percentages into numbers (reducing the decimals to the nearest whole numbers:
The survey, the report states, was conducted by receiving online feedback from 68 respondents and interviews of six eminent personalities. The six personalities constituted partners of firms such as Zia Mody, Pramod Nair, Matthew Gearing etc. It is surprising that arbitration counsels (or atleast those who appear before arbitral tribunals regularly) were not included in the list of eminent personalities although advocates are included in the sixty eight respondents category. At p. 17 of the report, the profiles of the respondents are described. A problem with the profiles being depicted in the form of percentages is that the number of respondents were relatively small (68) for a survey research of this kind. It would have been better to have them depicted in numbers as well. We have attempted to convert the percentages into numbers (reducing the decimals to the nearest whole numbers:
| Profile | Percentage (%) | Decimal Numbers | Whole Numbers |
| Arbitrators | 3 | 2.04 | 2 |
| Directors | 6 | 4.08 | 4 |
| Advocates | 9 | 6.12 | 6 |
| Managers | 13 | 8.84 | 9 |
| Partners/ Proprietors of Law firms | 20 | 13.6 | 14 |
| Legal head/ General Counsel | 25 | 17 | 17 |
| Others | 24 | 16.32 | 16 |
| Total | | | 68 |
Now, whether the survey's title is an exaggeration considering the number of participants involved is a valid question. But for this minor shortcoming, the study is interesting and there are several aspects worth noting in it. We'll analyse all those in another post on this topic.
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