I had the great misfortune of being a witness in an open and shut civil suit in a Delhi court. The case was filed in Apr 2019 and the judge had it entirely figured out in the first two hearings which were done by June. It’s been over 2 years since. I’ve lost count of the number of hearings now & there is absolutely zero progress. Luckily the complainant can afford to pay the lawyer just for marking attendance. This forced me to rethink my assumptions about the role of judiciary in India.
I tend to think that rather than being an institution for delivering justice, the judiciary is an employment generation scheme that is sluggard by design. There are about 2 million lawyers in India. It is inconceivable what would happen if they ran out of clients. If the judges begin to dispense cases swiftly, an entire industry would just collapse. This also explains the shameless continuation of colonial luxuries such as summer vacations, short working hours, not to mention zero accountability.
But the most grave implication of the above is the scapegoating of customary justice forums like khap panchayats. There has been a long and sustained propaganda campaign against them in the media with the tacit nod of the State. The amount of brainwashing that has happened is quite unbelievable. The moment you mention khap, immediately you are labelled as regressive, casteist, primitive and so on. Whereas there are khaps that have even gone to the extent of denouncing all that they are accused of.
The choice before the state is quite straightforward. Economics vs Justice. The state has chosen the first at the expense of the second. But it is tragic that people have so completely surrendered their sense of discrimination and get taken in so easily by abstract ideals.