READING COMPREHENSION PASSAGE (CLASS 11 AND 12)HOW INDIAN JUDICIARY SYSTEM CAN GET OUT OF TAREEK PE TAREEK MODE?

SOLVED WORKSHEET 34

HOW INDIAN JUDICIARY SYSTEM CAN GET OUT OF TAREEK PE TAREEK MODE?
FEBRUARY 2022 (Extracted from Chetan bhagat.com)

1. With Covid-19 slowly receding, expectations for normalcy are on the rise again. There’s also a desire for a return to solid economic growth, something that the virus hurt along with human beings. India’s dream of sustained high GDP growth, in the 8-9% range is back on the horizon.

2. GDP growth percentage was high in 2021 and remain so in 2022 as well. However, this is in large part due to the base effect, following the massive GDP shrinkage in 2020.Going forward, India’s high growth will require fixing areas that have held our economic growth back. The government has placed a lot of emphasis on infrastructure investments such as roads, railways, airports, and ports. This is indeed correct, as good infrastructure makes for a good economy and has a multiplier effect. 

3. There have also been regulatory changes, policies, schemes announced to improve India’s ‘ease of doing business’ score. This includes direct and indirect incentives to manufacture in India, whether in terms of tax breaks or even input credits for several sectors. All these measures are good. They will surely have an impact on our growth. However, to get to the 8-9% GDP growth range, year after year, there is one huge bottleneck that prevents India’s economy from thrusting full steam ahead. This is our justice system and hence the need for judicial reforms.

4. Almost everyone agrees India needs judicial reforms. Yet this doesn’t get the attention and change required like some other areas. We have mega packages for infrastructure reshaping our road networks, transformative GST reforms that touched every business in India, Aadhar card rollouts that touched almost every Indian and massive digitization of so many government services. Somehow the needle just doesn’t move as much in the case of judicial reforms. If we could vaccinate a billion people, surely, we can also make our courts faster?

5. For the real issue in judicial reforms is speed, not so much the integrity of our legal system. The system isn’t bad, it’s just slow. There’s little point going into the scary statistics of how many million cases remain pending, or anecdotes of cases where people were made to wait for decades. We all know that. A speedy and fair justice system is one of the hallmarks of a developed country, where we hope to be one day as well.

6. Speeding up a justice system, however, isn’t a straightforward task. It requires a multi-pronged approach. Here are five things we need to do if we want to have a faster and more efficient justice system.More budgetary allocation – Just as we have done for roads, trains, and ports, we need to ramp up the budgetary allocation for the judiciary. Today, the return on investment on adding judicial resources in terms of additional GDP growth is probably better than any new road or airport. Global investors like India. However, they worry about the slow court processes if they get into contractual disputes. Just as smooth roads help an economy, smooth courts do too.

More court buildings and virtual courts – A key problem cited with our justice system is the lack of enough courtrooms and offices. Covid taught us how to remote work. Doing that for our courts will ease the burden on physical infrastructure. Also, private developers can be incentivized to build new court buildings (only build, not run them!) by giving them compensatory land near these new courts for commercial use.

Hiring more people – On one hand we say we don’t have enough jobs in the country, on the other our court system can’t find enough people. We not only need more judges, but also more support staff to take over administrative work from the judges, so the judges time can be utilized for the most important task – adjudicating cases.

A separate paperwork and administrative assistance entity – separate from the court system, we need an entity that helps people assemble cases and do paperwork that prepares the groundwork for cases This will cut out filing delays. This is akin to the VFS services one uses to apply for visas to certain consulates and embassies. VFS is a separate entity and doesn’t decide your visa, but it gets your paperwork in order. This is most needed for our courts too.

Reimagine the paperwork filing and hearing system – Courts worldwide, fine as they are, follow hearing procedures invented hundreds of years ago. They aren’t designed for current times when literally every human being is connected to each other with a phone. Does the other side need some time to reply? Sure, drop your reply in the chat in the next 24 hours. Isn’t that a faster way than set yet another hearing date and get into ‘taarikh pe taarikh’ mode? If companies worldwide work differently from how they did two decades ago, why not our courts too.

The Indian judiciary is an important part of our democracy and is a source of pride. It keeps us safe and secures our rights. However, it needs more love and attention. Judicial reforms will not only make our society fairer and give people justice faster, but also be a huge driver of GDP growth. It’s all doable, we just need to make priority and realize the importance of fast, fair and up-to-date legal system for a modern India.

1. Has India achieved a sustained GDP growth in the last two years?
2. What is the bottle neck in India’s economic growth?
3. What is the flaw in Indian Judiciary system?
4. What will be the impact of spending more on improving the judicial system?
5. One important problem in Indian Judiciary system is lack of enough courtrooms and offices suggest one solution for this?
6. What makes a modern India according to Chetan Bhagat?

ANSWERS

1. After covid-19 India’s dream of sustained high GDP growth, in the 8-9% range is back on the horizon. GDP growth percentage was high in 2021 and remain so in 2022 as well.

2. There is one huge bottleneck that prevents India’s economy from thrusting full steam ahead. This is our justice system and hence the need for judicial reforms. Almost everyone agrees India needs judicial reforms.

3. The system isn’t bad but it is slow.

4. Today, the return on investment on adding judicial resources in terms of additional GDP growth is probably better than any new road or airport.

5. Covid taught us how to remote work. Doing that for our courts will ease the burden on physical infrastructure. Also, private developers can be incentivized to build new court buildings (only build, not run them)

6. we just need to make priority and realize the importance of fast, fair and up-to-date legal system for a modern India.