Shortcomings Of The Indian Judiciary

November 14, 2021

Since it was designated as the protector and custodian of the Indian Constitution, India’s judiciary has played a critical role in the country’s political and economic development. The Indian judiciary serves as a watchdog against violations of fundamental rights guaranteed by the Constitution, protecting all people, Indians and non-Indians alike, from discrimination, abuse of state power and arbitrariness.

To decide cases, the courts must first determine the relevant facts and then the applicable law, after which they must apply the relevant facts to the applicable law. The Indian judiciary supervises a common law system, in which the law of the land is defined by conventions, norms, and legislation, under the supervision of the Chief Justice of India. At the end of the day, the legal system is vital in the promotion of good public governance. If a dispute emerges, it must be handled in a court of law, despite the fact that there may be various regulations, rules, and procedures in place in the first place.

The Indian judiciary has taken a proactive stance, ensuring that fundamental human rights are protected in accordance with international law. In recent years, however, a number of inefficiencies have impeded the judiciary’s ability to operate. According to a survey conducted by us for the research, around 73% of individuals believe that the performance of the judiciary has not been satisfactory in the past couple of years.

The Indian Judiciary is the backbone of the Indian democratic framework. However, the major challenge faced by the judiciary is that although there are plethora of laws, there is not enough dissemination of justice. Although the laws are upheld to disseminate justice to the individuals , their outcomes might not necessarily be just in nature. It is by virtue of successful policy measures and affirmative action that laws are ensured to be proactively used as a tool to enforce justice in a sustainable and equitable manner.

Although the lack of procedure, structural inefficiencies and arbitrariness of the judicial system might bring negative social, economic and impacts to the country, effective policy solutions in form of establishing a case management system, following a bottom-up approach, improving the court infrastructure, decriminalization of minor offences, introduction of deferred prosecution agreements, making qualitative appointments of judges and promotion of mediation and settlement arrangements can prove to be substantial in rooting out all the aforementioned obstacles, and alongside establish a much stronger, reliable and efficient judiciary – which is undeniably the spine of the country.

The following paper aims to investigate the underlying problems that plague the Indian judicial system and to determine the root causes of these problems. Corruption, a lack of transparency, under utilization of technology, constant lawyer strikes, a lack of legal literacy, a dwindling supply of judges, a lack of interaction between the judiciary and the general public, a backlog of pending cases, under trials of the accused, and underpaid judges are all identified and discussed in greater depth to provide a more nuanced explanation for the underlying inefficiencies. The report further elaborates the impact of a failing judiciary on two metrics – social and economic – and provides adequate instances to support the logic in context of both the metrics. The study goes on to propose policy recommendations that can be applied to bring about an affirmative change in the Indian judicial system in order to overcome the previously mentioned impediments and address the resulting social and economic consequences of these changes. At the conclusion of the research, a comparative case study is showcased between the Indian legal system and the British legal system, whose laws the Indian legal system has been heavily influenced by and modeled in.