By Manoranjana Gupta
When India’s highest court weighs in on popcorn prices while nearly 90,000 cases wait for verdicts, it’s not just optics — it’s a measure of how judicial bandwidth is being spent and how civic priorities have begun to blur between spectacle and substance.
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Justice in Slow Motion
The Supreme Court of India is one of the busiest constitutional courts in the world. Yet, amid its lofty mandate — safeguarding liberty, interpreting the Constitution, and setting the moral compass of governance — it is now drowning in its own dockets. As of late 2025, nearly 90,000 cases remain pending before the Court. Across all levels of India’s judiciary, the number stands at a staggering 4.7 crore.
To the average citizen, these are just statistics. But to anyone who has waited years for a property dispute, a pension, or a criminal appeal to be resolved, each case number is a story of justice delayed — and sometimes denied. A nation capable of sending spacecraft to the moon and satellites across oceans still takes over a decade to settle a simple service matter.
For every constitutional bench hearing that defines the trajectory of national governance, there are thousands of ordinary citizens waiting in silent queues, their lives on hold because the court’s calendar has no space. When cases concerning liberty, livelihoods, and life itself jostle for time with issues of film tickets and food pricing, it’s time to ask: what is the true opportunity cost of courtroom minutes?
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A Court That Does Everything
No court in the democratic world handles the diversity of matters that India’s Supreme Court does. It is at once a constitutional guardian, a final appellate court, a consumer redressal body, and — through the proliferation of PILs — a civic complaint box for the entire nation.
From environmental disputes to school admissions, from bans on firecrackers to the distance of liquor shops from highways, from banning reality shows to fixing accountability for potholes — the court has, over the years, become the arbiter of nearly everything. It’s a reflection of both faith in the judiciary and failure of the executive.
Yet this faith has come at a cost. Every new direction that requires oversight — every policy or pricing case that demands compliance reports — consumes the same judicial bandwidth that could be used to decide pending appeals. The court’s time is finite, but its jurisdiction appears infinite.
And that is how, in 2025, we find ourselves discussing ₹700 cappuccinos and ₹100 bottles of water — not in a consumer forum, but in the country’s highest constitutional court.
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Popcorn, Coffee and the Price of Attention
The trigger for the latest debate was an appeal arising from Karnataka. The state government had proposed capping multiplex ticket prices under its cinema regulation rules. The Karnataka High Court, while hearing challenges from multiplex owners, issued a set of interim conditions that were so onerous — tracking every ticket, recording buyer IDs, keeping auditable logs — that the Multiplex Association of India approached the Supreme Court for relief.
A two-judge bench stayed those interim conditions and issued notices to the state and the film chamber. It was, in essence, a technical hearing on regulatory overreach.
Yet, what made national headlines wasn’t the stay order — it was an oral remark by the bench that “cinema halls will be empty if they keep charging ₹700 for coffee and ₹100 for water.”
Legally speaking, the Supreme Court did not fix prices for food and beverages. It simply made an observation about affordability. But in the age of viral headlines, nuance is the first casualty. The next morning, the public discourse was not about Karnataka’s regulatory powers or the High Court’s intrusive conditions — it was about whether the Supreme Court had become a price regulator for popcorn.
It’s an optics problem, not a legal one. Yet optics, in public life, are everything. And when India’s highest court seems to comment on what coffee should cost, while tens of thousands of critical matters await hearing, it fuels a deeper anxiety: Are we confusing public attention with judicial relevance?
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The Cost of Delay
Every minute spent in the Supreme Court is an investment of the nation’s most expensive civic capital — judicial time. And it is not an exaggeration to say that each minute carries an economic price tag.
Investor confidence, civil liberties, and policy reforms all hinge on the speed and certainty of adjudication. Every time a commercial dispute drags for years, it affects market behaviour and investor sentiment. Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) cases, meant to conclude within 330 days, often extend to two or three years. Each delay dilutes value, discourages bidders, and deters foreign capital.
In 2025, a Supreme Court reversal in a marquee insolvency resolution rattled international investors, reigniting old concerns about India’s legal predictability. When judgments take years to arrive and precedents shift overnight, markets see volatility as a symptom of judicial unpredictability.
The same holds true for criminal and constitutional matters. The backlog of undertrial prisoners, many incarcerated for longer than the maximum punishment for their alleged offences, is not just a statistical tragedy — it is a moral one.
The opportunity cost of courtroom minutes is thus not abstract. It is measured in lives disrupted, contracts frozen, investments deferred, and faith eroded.
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Optics and Overreach
Defenders of the Supreme Court argue — correctly — that the popcorn episode has been misreported. The bench was hearing a legitimate appeal, it curtailed unworkable conditions imposed by the High Court, and the comments about pricing were rhetorical, not judicial.
But the problem of optics remains. When the institution already struggles with credibility over pendency and access, even a passing comment can appear as misplaced attention. In the age of memes and headlines, perception becomes reality.
The real issue is not whether the judges were wrong to express exasperation at ₹700 coffee; it’s that the Court’s moral weight has been stretched so wide that even casual remarks trigger national debate. The line between judicial commentary and judicial intervention has blurred.
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What the Law Actually Says
It is worth recalling that in January 2023, the Supreme Court had already settled the principle that cinema halls are private premises. In the Jammu & Kashmir Cinema Owners Association case, the Court held that owners can decide what can or cannot be sold within their premises, and that consumers are free to choose whether to buy food there or not.
That ruling struck the right balance between freedom of enterprise and consumer choice. There is no legal basis for regulating the price of a sandwich inside a private establishment. If customers find it exorbitant, market forces will correct it — not judicial fiat.
In that light, the recent oral remarks should be seen for what they were: an observation, not a directive. But the public attention they generated underscores how every judicial syllable is amplified into a policy statement.
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Three Fixes That Matter
1. Judicial Triage and Calendaring Discipline
India needs structured triage — prioritising cases involving life, liberty, and constitutional interpretation. Dedicated benches for arrears can systematically clear the oldest matters, much like fast-track courts did for certain categories. Time-boxed hearings and minimal adjournments must become institutional norms.
2. Data-Driven Docket Management
The National Judicial Data Grid (NJDG) already provides pendency analytics. It should be leveraged more aggressively to identify bottlenecks, measure disposal rates, and set month-on-month targets. Bench compositions could be guided by subject-wise pendency — tax, criminal, commercial — to balance the load.
3. Procedural Minimalism
Courts must resist the temptation of micro-managing administrative minutiae. Each interim order that demands compliance reports or monitoring mechanisms creates a feedback loop of filings. The Supreme Court’s own stay on the Karnataka High Court’s excessive conditions is a reminder that less is often more in judicial intervention.
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Consumer Protection vs Judicial Paternalism
No one is arguing that consumers should be fleeced. Transparency and fair trade are vital. But that’s the domain of market regulators, not constitutional courts. If state governments or competition authorities find monopolistic behaviour in multiplex pricing, they can intervene through law.
Judges are not price auditors; their job is to uphold process and principle. The credibility of the judiciary lies in its ability to distinguish between matters of justice and matters of preference.
As Justice Ruma Pal once observed, “Judicial restraint is as important as judicial activism.” In a country of 1.4 billion citizens, restraint may actually be the highest form of activism.
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The Media’s Role in “Remark-ification”
There’s also a parallel crisis in reportage. In today’s digital ecosystem, oral observations become news, while actual orders barely make the last line of the article. When judges quip, journalists headline.
But what’s worse is the media’s growing addiction to sensationalism over substance. The true legal reasoning, the interim relief, the operative directions — all get buried under the froth of one catchy comment. Anything that splashes and makes instant headlines is now more valuable to the media than the actual outcome of the case.
The Supreme Court could mitigate this by releasing same-day synopses of its orders — clear one-paragraph summaries distinguishing between “observation” and “direction.” This simple act of transparency would prevent public confusion and maintain institutional dignity.
Equally, media outlets must relearn the discipline of reporting the order, not the outrage. The difference between judicial humour, empathy, and decree is fundamental — and ignoring it distorts public understanding of justice itself.
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Resetting Priorities
If every minute in the Supreme Court is civic gold, then it should be spent on issues that shape India’s future — not on rhetorical diversions. The backlog of constitutional cases, electoral reforms, digital rights, data privacy, and environmental justice demands attention far more urgently than whether coffee costs ₹700 or ₹70.
The Court’s time should be rationed the way a surgeon rations minutes in an operating theatre: every second counts toward saving a life, not just performing a ritual.
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The Real Signal
The judiciary remains India’s most trusted institution. But trust is sustained not just by pronouncements — it is earned through focus, consistency, and timely delivery. When the guardians of liberty begin to sound like consumer activists, it dilutes the majesty of the bench.
The real battle is not against overpriced popcorn; it is against overextended priorities. Courts exist to uphold justice, not manage commerce. Every minute spent elsewhere is a minute stolen from someone whose life depends on a verdict.
