India has a melancholic underfunded court system, with its shortfall of judges and a plethora of corrupt and cynical lawyers. It is also encumbered with a prodigious backlog of 29.2 million cases pending across the Supreme Courts, the High Courts and the Lower courts. This huge backlog of unresolved cases, is due to the lack of a good proportion of judges. According to legal experts, the reasons for the current mess of the Indian judicial system is manifold.
First and foremost, poor pay for judges causes a huge problem. In terms of equality of pay, India's legal professionals are the worst off. Unsurprisingly, such poor pay scales have kindled corruption, widespread bribery and political interference which has denied so many people their right to a fair trial. Amplifying on reasons for the ever rising corruption in the Indian judiciary, the report says delays due to a shortage of judges and complex legal procedures which propells Indians towards undesirable measures to get justice.
"The loss of confidence in the judiciary is mainly due to the long incubation period of litigation, with millions of cases pending disposal ... This backlog leads to long adjournments and prompts people to pay to speed up the process ... The degree of delays and corruption has led to scepticism about the judicial system. People seek shortcuts through bribery and favors, leading to further unlawful behavior." Clearing backlog of cases is the biggest challenge for the judiciary, and India has the largest number of pending cases in the world, as said by the Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh . According to Andhra Pradesh High Court judge Justice V V Rao, the Indian judiciary would take 320 years to clear the backlog of 31.28 million cases pending in various courts including High courts in the country ( The Times of India, Bangalore, dated 7th March 2010). Now the point is can the litigants have that long a life-span?
Whatever India has achieved so far will not last long until we correct our present corruptive judicial system and clear the backlog of pending cases. The Common man is fast losing faith in our present legal system. It is a fact that in a number of cases, when both the Plaintiff and Defendant are dead and gone, the cases are kept in fine fettle eating into the taxpayers' money and deprecates the progress of our Nation. Most of the time both Plaintiff and the Complainant blame themselves for going to the court without suspecting the delays, costs and above all loss of peace of mind.
The justice system is corrupted, as it often gives people unfair or delayed trials and makes decisions, which are not in the national interest. Criminals are often let off lightly, or not imprisoned, while many innocent people are often detained for years. The rich take advantage of the high costs, duplication and retrials. There are conflicts of interests between judges and those controlling the system. People are wrongly convicted. Fear of vilification implants a fear in the media and the unfortunate witnesses who stay away from the courts .
Justice must be so Mandatory that it must create a "trepidation" in the minds of people to believe that all kind of crimes are punishable without fail. This panic will certainly make others not to commit any such crimes in future. The Laws should be very Punctilious, but not Pliable and should be applicable to one and all, without any bias as to the status, Caste and Creed. Why is it that the common citizen of our country thinks twice or rather umpteen number of times to commit the same crime on a foreign soil? Because he is dead sure that he will get caught and face a heavy penalty. Here, things have been taken for granted, because the delivery of justice is itself too slow and moreover, everyone knows if you pay a fat amount you are exculpated. Our laws should stop being so magnanimous about offering a bail to just any body.
As quoted by Abhraham Lincoln: "He reminds me of the man who murdered both his parents, and then, when sentence was about to be pronounced, pleaded for mercy on the grounds that he was an orphan."
Till today, it is common knowledge that any one who is prosecuted does not feel any reproach. The victims of the crimes must feel satisfied with the terseness of the punishment as otherwise they themselves might try to take law into their own hands, and this could lead to "Recidivism."
Planning should be done to reduce the population of prisoners by systematic methods so that the costs of maintaining them can be controlled and reduced. Maintaining complete facts of crimes, prevention methods need to be looked into with an enterprising policy which will certainly give a good feed back on the needs of modifications on the current system of laws and punishment methods.As per the reports of some experts, Accountability also plays a great role. It is a pity that India has failed in its constitutional guarantee of ensuring speedy, accessible and accountable justice to its citizens. The reasons are not far to seek. The rule of law has become the casualty because the role of the Bar has been minimized. Judges alone cannot deliver justice but accountabilities must be accurately specified for judges, lawyers, paralegal staff as well as for both Plaintiff and Defendant. Files can be disposed off but justice cannot be delivered in the absence of the lawyers. The steps taken so far to expedite justice have proven worse than the crime itself.
Since "Justice delayed is justice denied", it is the duty of our Government to give confidence in the legal system. "Justice has nothing to do with what goes on in a courtroom; justice is what comes out of a courtroom," as told by Clarence Darrow. It is rightly said in one of the Chinese proverbs:"Where there are too many policemen, there is no liberty. Where there are too many soldiers, there is no peace. Where there are too many lawyers, there is no justice."
In my perspective, Justice is exactly like a train which is nearly always late. The trouble with the laws these days is that criminals know their rights better than their wrongs. We surely do not give our criminals much punishment, but we sure give them plenty of publicity. it is true that the vices of the rich and the great are so often mistaken for a simple error; and those of the poor and lowly for crimes. Laws are like spider webs through which the big flies pass and the little ones get caught.
Readers, don't you agree?
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