Mediation and Negotiation

Your landlord in Kharghar wants the rent raised and you want it frozen. You do not go to court on day one. You talk, each of you pushes a number, and you end up somewhere in the middle. That conversation is negotiation. Now imagine the two of you are so angry that you cannot sit in one room, and a neutral friend carries messages and helps you find a number you both can live with. That is mediation. Both are old, informal ways of settling disputes, and Indian procedural law now builds them into the court process.

In two minutes

Negotiation is direct bargaining between the parties; mediation adds a neutral third person who helps them reach their own settlement; in court proceedings, s.89 of the Code of Civil Procedure and Order X rules 1A to 1C let the court send parties to mediation and other settlement routes.

The rest of this chapter

The full explanation, the cheat sheet, every previous-year question at every mark weight, the quiz and the answer skeletons are part of Practical Training – II: Alternate Dispute Resolution on LexBlox Semester. Sign in to unlock the subject, or read Module 1 of Legal Language and Writing free.