DON’T CRY MILORD! (Just do your job)

Your Honour!

Indian Railways are struggling with nearly 30% vacancies in the cadre of track maintainers. We are also short of 20% Loco Drivers over the sanctioned strength. Indeed, we are short of manpower by the given yardsticks in almost all areas. But, we run ALL the trains with 90+% punctuality, we carry all the goods cheaper than any other mode and our safety is improving every day. We add new trains every year, run specials during festivals and holidays without additional resources. Our online ticketing is rated to be the best in the world. Our stations and trains are cleaner than ever, quality of food is improving and so is the passenger satisfaction across the country. True, we lack resources for expanding our network, but we do our assigned job well and without complaining.

We don't keep a pendency in running of trains. We do not have a hundred or a thousand trains waiting to run tomorrow or next week just because we have vacancies in our ranks. Yet, we find that the media, political parties and public at large are ready to accept backlog of cases in our courts on account of vacancies! 

Yesterday you cried, Milord! You lamented the vacancies in superior courts and stated that vacancies were the reason for pendencies. In my heart, though I don't think believe that you subscribe to that view. Vacancies can never be zero. I read in the newspapers, after the NJAC judgement, that the real problem of the judiciary is vacancies – 30% of late. But the pendency is older than this recent spurt in vacancies, which has worsened due to the NJAC issue. I have learnt that twenty-four High Courts together sit on a pile of some forty-five lakh pending cases. Appeals in criminal cases against conviction are waiting to be heard for as long as thirty years, more than the maximum sentence in the cases. I am certain all this cannot be explained away by vacancies alone. In any case it was the collegium, which ought to have filled those vacancies.

The only way to overcome this problem is that those, who are in the saddle, work a little harder to compensate for the vacancies. All of us do that in government, public sector or private enterprises. We work longer hours till late evening, on weekends, forego personal leave and certainly do not go on summer vacations. Even Secretaries to the Government of India are now required to punch-in their attendance sharp at nine AM every day. Surely, working longer hours is not anathema to you, My Lordship!

I often get judgements and awards from courts for compliance within two months, one month, or even a fortnight. I have no option but to burn the midnight oil and fulfil the orders in the judgement. How I wish I could one day beseech or request, though certainly not order Your Lordships, to deliver a judgement in two weeks since an important developmental project is held up, a contract is getting annulled or an international agreement is at stake! But, that would be a contempt of court, I guess. Surely, the judiciary is entitled to its independence and autonomy, surely it can rightfully claim non-interference and neutrality, but it ought to know that like other organs of state, the legislature and the executive, the judiciary too is paid out of taxes and that it is ultimately answerable to the paymaster, the common citizen of the country. The common person is increasingly getting restless. She wants good governance, she wants delivery of goods and services and above all she wants a just society. And, she wants them quick. Judiciary is answerable to her for its own share of deliveries.

How does the common citizen force change in governance? He votes. He votes a party out and brings in a new government. He gets the opportunity to do so every five years. Political parties, after having fooled the masses and after their repeated failures have realised that the public means business. They have yielded to a change in discourse from caste, religion and freebies to development and performance. How does a common man pull up the executive? How does he seek relief from exploitation and unfairness? He goes to a court of law. Leave aside the delays for a moment, he still hopes for justice, solace and compensation. What is important is that he has a door, which he can knock. But, were does he go, when the same door is closed to him for thirty years in his face? Whom does he implore, when the very institution he implores, has queued up lakhs of relief seekers ahead of him?

This frustration with the judiciary has led to abject hopelessness in the masses and ridicule of the process of law. Undertrials and appellants spend the best years of their lives in incarceration, people resort to coercion and murder for solving land and property disputes and an occasional dejected one commits suicide. 

Any organisation works with hierarchies, which are arranged in the fashion of a pyramid. The senior levels have fewer positions than the lower ones. Indeed, the entire supervision and management structure follows this dictum. Yet we have a State in the country, which has an inverted pyramid in the judiciary. There are one hundred sixty High Court Judges and just seventy-five district Judges! Yet, this High Court has the highest number of cases pending within its portals.

All organs of the State have undergone reforms and infusion of technology. Most departments of the government and companies in the private sector have become leaner as a result. The judiciary too has had its share of modernisation and IT embrace. But, the courts work at the same pace, actually slower than ever. One of the High Courts of the country has, on the 17th October last year, invited bids for supply of iPhone6S for use by the Hon’ble Judges. This model of phone was launched in September, i.e. just a month ago. We do not mind Our Lordships owning the latest gadget in the world costing sixty thousand Rupees each, not even if the poor people of India pay for it. But, we want a return on that investment. Please give us that.

We have all heard Justice Ruma Pal, who candidly showed the mirror to the judiciary by enumerating its seven sins – turning a blind eye to a colleague’s indiscretion, hypocrisy, secrecy in appointment of judges, plagiarism and prolixity, verbose judgements, personal arrogance, professional arrogance and nepotism.* We have all heard you, Your Lordship! You want total independence and autonomy. We agree with that too. You also said that you will improve the system from within. We know from experience that insulated systems are the most difficult to change and often a change promised from within is more of a chimera than an action plan. Yet we trust you for this time once again. But, remember, the outcome of the reforms will be judged by the people of India and not by the government or the legislature. Next time, the call for change may not take the legislative route.

So, here is my twopenny advice. All of these are within your purview. Maybe, if you followed some of these, you could smile the day you lay down your office.

1. Tell your colleagues and subordinate judges to come to office at 9:00AM and not leave before 6:00PM.

2. Fix a yardstick for judges and courts by which their performance will be measured - limit number of adjournments and hearings, limit the total span of time over which a case is heard and limit the number of pages a judge will write in his award.

3. Spend quality time in courts hearing arguments and delivering justice and stop playing the adjournment game, better known as tareekh-par-tareekh.

4. You and your fellow judges in superior courts are also supervisors to lower judiciary. Do that job well. Pull up the lazy ones and compel them to deliver.

5. Force some discipline on lawyers to come in time and come prepared on the first appearance itself.

6. Learn some English and unlearn all that Latin. Make it simpler for the common man to understand what you say and intend.

7. Tell your colleagues to cut that sarcasm out of their speech in the courts. Don't speak what you cannot write in your judgements.

8. Make it possible and easy for a common man with an average level of education to argue and contest his own case rather than be fleeced by greedy lawyers.

9. And, last but not the least, give up that summer vacation. You do not have to sail to England to avoid the Indian heat. Stay here, and feel for the fellow citizens.

http://www.ndtv.com/india-news/justice-ts-thakur-breaks-down-before-pm-modi-stresses-need-for-more-judges-1398829?site=full