Kalam suggests study on judicial delays

The voice of our favorite President Kalam; a step certainly in the right direction, and pushed by the highest official of the country, but only just the beginning. We already know how slow and inefficient the judicial system really is, with delays and adjournments being a regular feature, non-computerization causing scalability problems, and stupid rules that are unable to handle blatant corruption. The solution is not simple. A quick search brought up an excellent study from 2005 (** already done **) by the Centre for Media Studies from Delhi.

Some quick points from the report:

- Value of corruption is estimated at Rs. 2630 crores per annum
- Delhi has the highest 2.31 judges per lakh of population. Bihar has 1.21, and Uttar Pradesh has 0.78.
- 2.6 crore cases are pending in Indian courts, given that the population of India is only 1 crore, and almost 50% of the population is below 25 years of age and hence likely to form a minuscle share of the pending court cases.
- More than half the respondents have to visit the courts at least 4 times. 36% of these people have to visit again because of postponement of their hearings, while 21% have to come back simply because the judges did not show up.

Things look bad, but small steps are being taken, but but probably too slowly. Fast track courts have been set up, registrars are appointed to look into complaints about judges and other staff, and government grievance websites are available; but then again we all know the latest on the Jessica Lal murder where all the accused were set free, and the Zahira Sheikh hostile witness incident. Even if sufficient judges are employed, even if the system is computerised, even if the grievance websites work, something is still wrong that the Jessica Lal and Zahira Sheikh cases still occur.

If President Kalam must do a study, then the study should focus at higher levels of the working of the system. Things cannot work well in a country where the judiary is unable to ensure lawful behavior on the part of its citizens, and prefers to blindfold itself from the world. All talk of social entrepreneurism, success in IT, Bharat Nirman, etc, etc, etc, is all waste otherwise. Corruption should not be taken for granted just because it is there. We must learn from efforts like those of Bob Geldof and Transparency International to tackle corruption and ensure that the benefits reach the beneficiaries. But that alone is not going to help until we ourselves unite and vow to stand up against what is unlawful and unjust. Rang de Basanti!