Arguably the single biggest constraint to ease of doing business in India is now the ability to enforce contracts and resolve disputes. This is not surprising given the 3.5 crore cases pending in the judicial system.

• Much of the problem is concentrated in the district and subordinate courts. Contrary to conventional belief, however, the problem is not insurmountable.
• A case clearance rate of 100 per cent (i.e. zero accumulation) can be achieved with the addition of merely 2,279 judges in the lower courts and 93 in High Courts even without efficiency gains.
• This is already within sanctioned strength and only needs filling vacancies.
• Scenario analysis of efficiency gains needed to clear the backlog in five years suggest that the required productivity gains are ambitions, but achievable.
• Given the potential economic and social multipliers of a well-functioning legal system, this may well be the best investment India can make.

Economic Survey (2017- 18) presented evidence of the backlog of cases weigh down the Indian judiciary, economic tribunals and the tax department. They constrained economic growth. Relationship between economic governance and the Rule of Law is seen as the key to prosperity. Even though recent initiatives etc. IBC code and GST has improved India’s rank in ‘Ease of Doing Business Ranking’, India continues to lag on the indicator for enforcing contracts. Indian judicial system has over 3.53 crore pending cases. However, it is a potentially solvable problem. So, India should make investment in judicial reforms. As it can be seen that District and Subordinate courts (D&S courts) account for 87.54% of pending cases, there is a clear need to analyse the overall performance of these courts.

District and Subordinate courts (D&S courts)

Clearing legal logjam

1. There are two key issues at hand that need to be dealt with in order to make the judiciary more efficient.
   • Achieving a 100% clearance rate so that there is zero accumulation to the existing pendency
   • Backlog of cases already present in the system must be removed.
2. It is recognized that the disposal rate can be increased by increasing the number of judges at D&S courts.
   • There are currently 17,891 judges compared to the sanctioned strength of 22,750.
   • On average, a judge disposes 746 cases. In order to clear all the backlog in the next five years, 8,152 judges are needed more.
3. Similarly, by using same algorithms, it can be concluded that High Courts need a further 361 additional judges to clear all backlogs in the next five years.
4. To clear backlog, the Supreme Court needs to increase its sanctioned strength by six.
5. So, it shows that a major hurdle to economic growth and social well-being can be stabilized through a relatively small investment in the legal system by increasing sanctioned strength.
6. Civil suit (14%), civil execution (4.21%), warrant/ summons (55.63%) and criminal application (2.8%) are common case types stuck in the backlog.
7. This implies that the additional judges need to specialize in these case types, specially criminal application, so as to speed up the disposal of such cases.

• Indian courts are close down for significant period due to vacations. Length of these vacations varies a great deal from court to-court and states to states.
• So, increasing the number of working days can improve the productivity of Supreme Court and High Court.
• However, It is unlikely to significantly impact lower courts. These courts work almost as many days as government offices

• ICTS is a proposed specialized services that focuses on the administrative aspects of the legal system.
• Major roles to be played by ICTS would be,
  • Provide administrative support functions needed by the judiciary
  • Identify process inefficiencies and advise the judiciary on legal reforms
  • Implement the process re-engineering
• It is not a unique model and practiced in other countries such as the United Kingdom.

• Technology can significantly improve the efficiency of courts.
• e-Courts Mission Mode Project is being rolled out in phases by the Ministry of Law and Justice. It has helped the creation of the National Judicial Data Grid (NJDG).