Mahatma Gandhi practiced law in South Africa from 1893. In one of his first cases, he persuaded the two parties to take their dispute to an arbitrator and settle it. He wrote that he had realized “the true function of a lawyer was to unite parties riven asunder.”
“This lesson was so indelibly burnt into me that a large part of my time during the twenty years of my practice as a lawyer was occupied in bringing about private compromises of hundreds of cases.”
The Mediation Act of 2023 provides for community mediation. It covers “any dispute likely to affect peace, harmony and tranquillity amongst the residents or families of any area or locality.” Such a dispute may be settled “through community mediation with prior mutual consent of the parties to the dispute.”
Under Section 43, a panel of three community mediators is formed to help the parties reach a settlement.
Under Section 37 of the Consumer Protection Act, 2019, a consumer complaint can leave the courtroom. “At the first hearing of the complaint after its admission, or at any later stage,” a district commission may find that the dispute can be “settled by mediation in accordance with the provisions of Chapter V.”
The parties are then asked to agree in writing to mediation.
“Payment scams and delays are common problems for textile traders in Surat,” Apparel Resources noted in March 2025. That month it reported that the Federation of Surat Trade and Textile Associations had formed a 16-member arbitration panel, chaired by a retired judge from Delhi.
The panel offered traders a way to settle payment disputes without police complaints or court cases.
Since May 3, 2018, Section 12A of the Commercial Courts Act, 2015, has required mediation before a commercial suit. A suit “which does not contemplate any urgent interim relief” “shall not be instituted unless the plaintiff exhausts the remedy of pre-institution mediation.”
On April 30, 2024, the Godrej family announced that it would split its 127-year-old group. Adi and Nadir Godrej took Godrej Industries and its listed companies. Their cousins Jamshyd Godrej and Smita Godrej Crishna took Godrej & Boyce and a land bank in Mumbai.
The family statement called the agreement “an ownership realignment,” reached “in a respectful and mindful way to maintain harmony and to better align ownership.”
Bichauliya. The Rekhta dictionary translates it as mediator, arbitrator, go-between and middleman. Its Hindi definitions add a person who mediates to settle a deal, a person who steps in between to get something done, and a person who arranges a marriage or an engagement.
A Lok Adalat, a people’s court, settles disputes by compromise. Under the Legal Services Authorities Act of 1987, it arrives “at a compromise or settlement between the parties.” Its award “shall be deemed to be a decree of a Civil Court,” and “no appeal shall lie to any Court against the award.”
Since 2015 National Lok Adalats have been held across India on single days, each disposing of a large number of pending cases.
In Premchand’s story Panch Parmeshwar (1916), the friends Jumman and Algu each sit in judgment in a case that touches the other. Algu, as head of the village panchayat, rules against his friend. An old woman has told him: Panch ke dil mein khuda basta hai. God lives in the heart of the panch.
Later Jumman, now an enemy, must judge Algu’s case. When he judges fairly, the village cries out: Panch Parmeshwar ki jai! Victory to the panch who is God.