The focus of the State

The state only needs to be involved in those areas of society where private participation is either not economically viable or not trustworthy.
The legal framework is one area which requires state involvement. Frankly this is the department that should have the highest govt employees. If a government sets rules, the legal department should be adequately staffed to ensure that every violation of the rules is recorded and appropriate action taken.
The easiest way to ensure a strong legal department is to increase workforce of the local Police. A bit more difficult is to increase the number of judges. If judges cannot be increased rapidly, there has to be a mechanism that allows arbitration, presided by someone who one need not be legally proficient. No person should have to spend more than a month as an undertrial, and no case should take more than a year to go from the lowest court to the Supreme court.

With close to 10 lac cases still awaiting judgement, and a similar amount of undertials put up in jails for lack of financial resource or legal knowledge to get bail, the present system is pathetic.

There is an urgent need to divert present govt employees wasting precious time in irrelevant departments like the Doordarshan and Indian Airlines and put them to manning these arbitration courts to see that pending cases are quickly disposed. In the mean time, the number of courts, and judges needs to be increased, and the salary to judicial officers increased to attract a larger pool of people.

As one of the pillars of democracy, the legal department is responsible for ensuring that citizens do not lose trust in the system.

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