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Justice in India: Modi’s rhetoric meets reality

“WHEN justice is accessible to all, delivered in a timely manner, and reaches every individual regardless of their social or financial background—that is when it truly becomes the foundation of social justice.” Thus declared Narendra Modi on November 8th, addressing a conference on legal-aid delivery at the Supreme Court. The prime minister’s cadence was vintage: soaring, inclusive, unassailable. The facts on the ground—and in comparative perspective—are rather less inspiring.

Start with timeliness. India’s courts are choked with over 50m pending cases; the Supreme Court alone carries more than 80,000. Average resolution times stretch to a decade in lower courts. Judicial vacancies stand at 40%—some 5,000 posts unfilled despite repeated pledges. The judiciary’s budget is a derisory 0.08% of GDP. Lok adalats, the government’s flagship fast-track mechanism, dispose of just 1-2% of cases annually. Contrast this with peers: Britain’s Crown Courts clear 90% of criminal cases within a year; Singapore’s judiciary resolves 95% of civil suits in under 12 months. Even Brazil, no stranger to backlogs, has halved its average civil-case duration to 18 months since 2015 through digitisation and mandatory mediation. Mr Modi’s promise of prompt justice is, in short, a statistical impossibility.

Accessibility fares little better. Legal aid reaches fewer than one in ten eligible citizens; rural clinics are often unstaffed. Seven in ten undertrials are too poor to post bail. For Dalits and Adivasis, the picture is grimmer still: conviction rates under the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act languish below 30%, while reported incidents rose 12% last year. The same law is routinely weaponised in false complaints, delivering swift punishment without due process. Elsewhere, the contrast is stark. The Netherlands spends 0.9% of GDP on courts and provides free counsel in 80% of civil cases; South Africa’s Legal Aid Board handles 450,000 matters annually with a staff of 2,500. India’s National Legal Services Authority, by comparison, manages a fraction of that with far greater need.

Mr Modi links judicial reform to social justice. Yet caste-based atrocities persist, SC/ST youth unemployment exceeds 20%, and a promised caste census remains undelivered. Recent legislative triumphs—the Jan Vishwas Act, which slashed 40,000 business compliances—have eased corporate India’s path while leaving labour and tenancy laws untouched. Globally, judicial efficiency correlates with social trust: the World Justice Project ranks Denmark and Norway in the top five for “civil justice” accessibility; India sits 79th out of 142. In Scandinavia, case clearance rates exceed 100% annually (meaning more cases resolved than filed); in India, the backlog grows by 2m cases each year.

The prime minister’s eloquence is undeniable. His government’s record on judicial delivery is not. In India, justice is less a foundation than a mirage: visible from afar, vanishing on approach—while much of the world has built sturdier bridges across the divide.

FACTS

  • 70% of undertrials are poor. They’re in jail because bail is a VIP pass.
  • Legal aid? Reaches less than 10% of the needy. Rural clinics? More haunted than functional.
  • SC/ST victims file atrocity cases. Wait 7 years. Conviction rate? Under 30%.
  • Meanwhile, false cases under the same Act? Instant arrest, zero proof needed. Congrats—injustice on fast-forward.
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