Costs of delayed justice

The link with economic growth can't be ignored

India’s judicial system has long been known for its clunky inefficiency. So when Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke of the need for “ease of justice” alongside ease of doing business and ease of living, he was reflecting a reality that most Indians have come to take for granted. Speaking at the first all-India legal district services authorities meet in Delhi, Mr Modi said that justice delivery was as critical as access to justice. The prime minister specifically referred to the need to speed up the release of under-trial prisoners languishing in Indian jails for want of legal aid. This is the second time this year Mr Modi has referred to the inhuman conditions of overcrowded Indian jails, an issue that indebted businessman Vijay Mallya could raise even in a British court. In May, he appealed to the judiciary to devise ways to release 3,500,000 under-trial prisoners.

This issue alone, which drove one chief justice to tears in the PM’s presence in 2016, exemplifies the inefficiency of the judicial system because the Supreme Court had mandated the release of under-trial prisoners who had been incarcerated for 10 years without being convicted. Apart from some moves in Maharashtra, no state has made significant progress in this direction. The case of under-trial prisoners reflects just one aspect of the defective judicial system. The slow speed of judicial appointment at all levels has created a humongous backlog of cases. To date, some 47 million cases are pending across different levels of the system, the bulk in subordinate courts (mostly criminal cases). The research group PRS Legislative has reckoned that if no new cases were filed, at the current disposal rate it would take high courts and subordinate courts three years each to dispose of the cases. This can be considered warp speed, given that some 182,000 cases are over three decades old but it reflects how far the shortage of judges — between 20 and 40 per cent at high court and subordinate court levels — has delayed justice for millions of Indians.

The willingness to accept frivolous cases of “hurt sentiments”, which has come into vogue in recent years, cannot be helping the cause. This apart, the poor quality of legal aid provided by the state has distorted Indians’ access to justice. Most prefer to hire private lawyers to fight cases, which can be guaranteed to put the average litigant out of pocket. One nationwide study in 2016 showed that the loss of wages and business for litigants attending lower courts worked out to over Rs 1,300 per day, a sum out of reach for most Indians. At 2022 prices the sum must be far higher. This fact alone has also meant that Indians are forced to tolerate high levels of corruption in society because they lack the wherewithal to take transgressors to court, which is certainly a key ease of living issue. Extrapolated against the big picture, the failure to enforce contracts has played a key role in India’s relatively low ranking on the World Bank’s now discontinued global Ease of Doing Business survey, which scarcely moved even as other parameters improved. As India looks to accelerate the pace of economic growth, the inefficiency of the judiciary is becoming steadily more conspicuous.