justice in rural areas in India‖ (Penal Reform International, 2001: 86). The nyaya panchayats blended characteristics of formal and traditional justice. Like the Bangladeshi village courts, nyaya panchayats were not bound by the formal legal rules of evidence and procedure; their members were not legally trained; they had jurisdiction over civil disputes and minor crimes, but lacked the power to fine or imprison; and their decisions were subject to appeal into the formal courts.

The nyaya panchayat is judged to have been a failed experiment. Citizens considered the nyaya panchayats foreign and inaccessible in relation to their own traditional justice institutions, but not legitimate or powerful enough for their most serious claims. So ―the vast majority of disputes . . . were resolved under traditional mechanisms‖ while ―those willing and able to take their dispute further afield tended to bypass the nyaya panchayats and utilize the more formal state courts‖ (Penal Reform International, 2001: 88). Several states formally banned the nyaya panchayats; by the late 1970s they were considered moribund (Penal Reform International, 2001; Galanter and Krishnan, 2004).<sup>15</sup> One key difference between nyaya panchayats and gram adalats is in panel composition. Nyaya panchayat members had permanent seats, and were elected by gram panchayat members. Fazlul Huq, founder of MLAA, considers the structure of Bangladesh village court panels to be the institution‘s defining feature. Each party is guaranteed to have two panelists whom he or she respects, and the fifth is someone who is accountable, via elections, imperfect though they are, to the community at large (Huq, February, 2008).

Other countries have also experimented with hybrid justice institutions, though perhaps none bears as close a historical and institutional resemblance to the Bangladeshi village court as the nyaya panchayat. In Peru, some 4,600 unpaid, lay justices of the peace have limited jurisdiction over small civil cases and minor crimes. They adjudicate by a simple, oral process in which the emphasis is on conciliation and the parties represent themselves. NGOs have provided basic training in law, but the justices of the peace generally combine law with local custom. Until 1999 the justices of the peace were selected by the superior courts of each district, often on the recommendation of local notables. In 1999 they were elected for the first time, which added younger people and some women to their ranks. These justices of the peace have a relatively long history, dating to at least the 1970s, and have widely been considered to be popular and successful in providing affordable, accessible justice (Hammergren 2007).

The Philippines established a Barangay Justice System in 1978. Like the Union Parishad in Bangladesh, the Barangay is the most local political unit in the Philippines. And like Bangladeshi village courts, the Barangay justice system lies between customary legal systems - especially diverse in the Philippines, in part because the country is an archipelago—and the formal court system.

> 15 The Ministry of Panchayati Raj drafted the Nyaya Panchayat Bill, 2006, proposing to revive nyaya panchayats at a national level, but the bill has not been passed.  It is opposed by the Law Ministry on several grounds, including: 1) choosing nyaya panchayat members by elections would weaken judicial independence and 2) granting legal jurisdiction to laypeople without legal training would be dangerous and would violate requirements set out by the jduiciary.  The Law Ministry has drafted competing legislation to extend the formal judiciary to a more local level, the Grama Nyayalayas Bill, 2007.  The Gram Nyayalayas Bill has been introduced in parliament but not passed. (Upadhyay 2008).

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