The delay in our legal procedures, more squarely the proverbial quagmire of court schedules, endless deferred dates, increasing cost of litigation, denial of justice, shoddy environment at least in the district courts and prevalence of corrupt practices are good to break anybody’s nerves. But what is of equal concern is the weak legal regimen in our country, from the point of view of care, respect and concern for law and its weak enforcement.
The régime to begin with, as an inheritance from the colonial rule, is entirely constructed in a foreign language, is highly punctuated and verbose and complicated for ordinary folks to comprehend, let alone the distant likelihood of inferring or deducing any meaning from it. The syntax of ‘subject to’ and ‘provided that’, ‘provided further that’, notwithstanding’, ‘herein after’ and thousand other such exclamations are in vogue that cannot be said to be even plain English. It does not help that literacy in general and legal literacy in particular is still low in the country. The task is then left to various players, some scrupulous, some not so, who have the forté to stand up between the four walls of law and the litigants. Typically this has fashioned a stratified, opaque and omniscient institution that is as inaccessible as it is unresponsive. It is not to say we do not have good laws; in fact, we have many. But they are very little understood and even lesser followed.
There is plethora of laws in our country, in fact a bit too many, and we continue to make couple of them every year. There seems to be an unusual belief in our country that every problem can be addressed by making a law around it. There is no other demand in the public domain that is so vociferously and strongly put forward as that of making laws about a certain thing. In fact, most political debates today are based on what should be the next set of laws — as if the new law being envisaged will cure the malaise in question like a magic wand. The result is that we perhaps have the dubious distinction of being a country with maximum number of laws with minimum degree of compliance.
Despite making huge exertions for making laws, we have not shown the desired concern for implementing them through institutional support. In the hurry to make laws, we tend to ignore the imperative of having in place a mechanism that would facilitate their implementation. It is not surprising that many of our laws are lying frozen while the society suffers. The mechanism of implementation has to be comprehensive, i.e., informed by intelligent appreciation of what works, planning for it and putting it in position.
Next aspect in that loop is what we call enforcement of law. This is the weakest link in the chain due to various factors but most important and equally deplorable due to the widespread disease of corruption that pervades, especially in the realm of regulatory and civic laws. Compliance is missing because a person or an institution easily gets away with violations at a low cost. The thriving industry of bribery ensures that enforcement never becomes a threat for those with deep pockets. The diversion of revenue through this process, a matter of grave concern in itself, is colossal but more importantly it promotes a conniving and acquiescent society that flourishes on circumventing the law through illicit means. Interestingly, the cost theory applies to both — the violators and the enforcers.
Since the possibility of getting caught is minimal, the violators are not risk-averse. The enforcers are equally risk-takers as the possibility of getting caught in the process of taking bribe is very remote. Thus, both are enjoying in a low cost scenario. The need is to raise the bar of cost for both, so that deterrence becomes robust. We have seen how the UK ombudsmen are effectual — their punishment is instant that acts as a deterrent.
From Singapore to Japan and Korea to the Western countries, they have been able to break the jinx long years ago but we are lagging behind. It is holding back our country from progress. We cannot be called a modern nation in the absence of respect for law and its effective enforcement. It is time we make a serious plan to do that. We sum up by quoting Pablo Picasso, “Our goals can only be reached through a vehicle of a plan, in which we must fervently believe and upon which we must vigorously act. There is no other route to success.”