The task of a state is to deliver justice to its citizens - in a timely manner.
If we fail to do so, we cultivate the fertile grounds for people to take up arms. A bit like we are all witnessing in the Pakistan's NWFP (North West Frontier Province) area, where some people would rather have Taliban Justice than the government's brand of excuriatingly slow justice. Indeed, we have come across some incidents of people taking law into their own hands in India too, mob justice beating and publicly humiliating (sometimes killing) criminals and so on.
Official figures show that more than 30 million cases are pending in Indian courts - some since 1950! The backlog is partly due to archaic laws.
The other aspect of this is the kind of people being allowed into public life lately in India.
So, how can we reform the Judiciary?
1. Decriminalize activities based on various obsolete laws:
One of the reasons for having so much strain on the Judiciary is that we have too many antiquated laws! Should a democratic society enforce its morality in such a manner?
Consider this, Prostitution is a crime, Homosexuality is a crime (by a law from 1860), Obscenity in public is a crime, Adultery is a crime (strangely, only the man can be punished!), Betting is a crime and we are still governed by a Telegraph act of 1855.
Now, we all know these things are difficult to enforce. And we all know the effectiveness of all such laws in actually fixing the "illegal" activities that they were trying to curb. Most often than not, these laws have just become a tool for harassment of Commercial Sex Workers, Homosexuals, and film stars who may appear in various advertisements or fashion shows.
If we review and get rid of such obsolete laws, we can get rid of many of the petty cases, thus freeing up the judiciary to deal with issues that are more important for the society, such as murder cases involving the politicians.
Lot of things have been made a law and order problem, whereas they should be treated as a social problem. Activities such as betting, prostitution will keep going on, its in society's interest to ensure they happen in a regulated way, and are taxed as well.
2. Fast track courts for matters of public interest:
A third of previous Lok Sabha had serious criminal cases against them. The law disallows a convicted criminal from participating in electoral process, but the appeal process is so slow that our Neta's take advantage of this. Our judiciary is overworked, and there are millions of pending cases in India.
Any matter of public interest, such as corruption cases involving our legislature should be dealt in a "Fast-track" court with very regular hearing. We dont want a situation that we learn 20 years from now that our minister of defense was a corrupt person who sold out our nation's war plans and other secrets! Do we?
3. Modernization of the courts:
Recently, in a famous case involving a popular actor, we learnt that the special courts in Mumbai did not have the level of connectivity one would expect. It took a few months to serve a notice.
Clearly, our judiciary is overworked, and we need to expand its size, reach and scale.
But, apart from that, we need to change the way justice is delivered and looked at in India. This needs to be a process linked with a common citizen database, where we need not spend a few years establishing the obvious.
OK, nothing is obvious when it comes to judiciary, but I need not be fighting a case to prove that I am alive, for instance, thats an infrastructure and identity issue. Yet, a lot of people have been doing precisely that!
