ARE WE LIVING IN A JUST SOCIETY?
Justice precedes all other values that we the people of India solemnly secure in the Preamble to our Constitution.It is not that the other values are less significant but the fact is simply this: Justice is the bedrock of democracy because injustice causes cynicism and alienation which eventually erode the society's sense of liberty, equality and fraternity.
Justice reinforces democracy and a just society is where the state institutions are fair, objective and impartial. By that logic every excessive police action or serious inaction, every preventable calamity, and every avoidable war is an act of injustice. A microcosm of our challenges is reflected in India's ongoing drought and drinking water shortage in several States. Every death attributable to shortage of safe water or its procurement is an act of remediable injustice to millions. It shows how water touches the lives of the rich and the poor differently and how poverty and discrimination are the biggest barriers to access to justice.
So, are we living in a just society? We at Common Cause believe that the answer to that question need not depend on who is asking because the citizens' access to justice must not hinge on the caste, class and power hierarchies. We know that the people are prepared to swallow some injustice for some time provided things are seen to be moving in the right direction. But it is no secret that the citizen's access to justice is becoming more and more illusionary in the world's largest democracy.
It was exactly this point that the Chief Justice of India, Justice T S Thakur, was making when he broke down in the presence of the Prime Minister. His point was that the efficacy of the judicial system was vital for the country's future, its growth agenda, and investment climate. But nothing is being done to fix India's collapsing judicial infrastructure, he told a conference of the State Chief Ministers and Chief Justices of High Courts. The Law Commission had recommended in 1987, the CJI pointed out, that the judges' number must be scaled up from 10 to 50 per million people which meant 40,000 more appointments of judges.
Today we have 13 judges per million population compared to about 50 in developed world. Worse still is that rather than aggressively creating new positions we are creating a backlog of existing positions. That is a double whammy for the district and subordinate courts where 21.8 million cases were pending until the last month, 58% of them for over two years, according to government figures. (The corresponding figure in the poorest states like Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal ranges between 65% and 74%)
Obviously India's judicial gap is widening despite an ambitious E-Courts programme launched in 2007 as a Mission Mode Project (MMP). It involves creation of an ICT environment for making the outmoded judicial system smart, productive and user-friendly. Even though some progress has been made, the MMP is floundering at best. The programme takes special care to keep out India's nifty tech companies famous for giving global competition to the Western IT giants. Having missed many deadlines, the MMP has embarked on its second phase worth over Rs 1600 crore without a satisfactory closure of the first phase.It is official that at the end of the first phase judicial pendency and delays have gone up rather than coming own. The upshot of business-as-usual could be both dangerous and tragic for India's rule of law.
This issue of Common Cause journal is dedicated to common litigant's access to justice, particularly with the aid of better technology and systems, and is curated by Pallavi Sharma. Please write in to us or share your views via email, feedback@commoncause.in. Our team received very good feedback for the last issue on the Right to Education and we look forward to hearing from you again.
[ 3 ]
Vipul Mudgal
