The Emerging Future of Law and Justice in India

Mainstreaming digital architecture for law and justice

Digital solutions are transforming almost every aspect of law and justice, and the pandemic has propelled this process forward by at least 3-5 years. The early applications of technology in legal practice, case management, contract management, legal research, dispute resolution and online identity, which surfaced in 2018, have given way to sophisticated solutions that have demonstrated incremental value and even created digital-first experiences for many categories. This has been made possible by advancements in foundational technology such as Natural Language Processing and other Machine Learning technologies, as well as greater access to data sources and the buy-in of the government and judiciary at the highest levels. There is also early interest in developing core data and technology architecture that innovators could use via open APIs to develop the next generation of legal and justice solutions, in much the same way that financial solutions have built on the IndiaStack architecture. 

However, for technology to increase access to justice, we need to see the critical values of inclusion, accessibility and security being embedded into its very conception and design. End users of technology are not a monolith but a diverse range of individuals who possess varying infrastructures, abilities and challenges when engaging with technology tools or platforms. If this is not taken into consideration, all these solutions, whether public or private, can further disadvantage vulnerable communities, whose lack of access to justice already has significant knock-on effects on their overall welfare, economic opportunities and well-being. To prevent this, the implementation of digital infrastructure, particularly public solutions, must be carefully calibrated and should function as an option alongside existing offline systems. There are opportunities to engage civil society organisations and communities in ensuring last-mile access to private and public solutions. 

Inviting non-traditional actors to drive inclusive innovation by bringing outside expertise and networks

Complex language, archaic processes and dominant operatives have long kept non-legal actors out of law and justice. Innovators entering the sector have struggled to gain acceptance, access networks and secure resources. In some cases, such as with Agami Prize 2018 winner Indian Kanoon, they have faced active resistance and scepticism despite their profound impact. The emergence of networks and resources, including many from within the current system, to provide technical as well as emotional and social support is thus vital – and as important as the solutions for law and justice problems.

Empowering law schools and law students to drive justice innovation in their communities

The role of universities is changing all over the world. From being closeted environments developing professional and career skills, they are increasingly coming to be seen as critical social hubs to drive innovation, develop community capacity and provide leadership. Some of the most creative innovations in recent years, such as Project Echo in the United States, have been built entirely on a reframing of this role of the university vis-à-vis the community. In the case of Project Echo, reimagining medical schools as hubs that can provide expertise, inspiration and social support for local healthcare centres to scale their impact was a game-changer in healthcare. Law schools, including in India, have long had a strong public orientation, and almost every law school has a legal services clinic or legal aid cell. However, these models have become dated and plainly inadequate. For the sake of both the country and the law students themselves, we must hasten the creation of a new role for law schools and their students in India as law and justice changemakers.

Making police and prisons more humane and accountable

The first-hand experience of the justice system for every citizen, and in a way the face of it, is the police. As gatekeepers of the criminal justice system, they play a crucial role in justice delivery. Issues of police accountability made it to the headlines on multiple occasions in 2020 with the Hathras case, the Delhi riots and globally, in the case of George Floyd in the United States. Meanwhile, our prisons, with a few exceptions, have long been miserable places where the majority of those incarcerated – 7 in 10 as per the 2019 National Crime Records Bureau data – have not even been convicted. 

Both these systems are fraught with challenges such as poor working conditions, disregard for well-being in high stress jobs, and lack of capacity building to keep up with emerging knowledge and best practices in their areas. They also suffer from trust deficits, requiring us to innovate extensively in and around them. 

In 2018, this was a paralysed sphere of work, with hardly any AP18 applicants working in police reform. Prison reform too saw only a handful of initiatives, such as Unnati Plus in Telangana prisons – a part of that year’s State Innovation Showcase – which is re-examining practices within the criminal justice system by focusing on the intersection of law, psychology, mental health and medicine. In 2020, this trend has improved significantly, with 25 AP20 initiatives (many of which are new) working to strengthen these systems inside out and outside in. 

Creating a collaborative ecosystem for changemakers to solve complex problems

Many of the problems that we seek to solve are complex problems that require us to act collaboratively. The disastrous consequences of the absence of collaborative networks became painfully evident in the early days of the COVID-19 lockdown, when relevant systems were unable to kick into action and provide timely support to migrants. Given the lack of open and fluid structures to facilitate collaboration, relief efforts carried out by concerned citizens were limited, sporadic and temporary. In essence, innovations that focus on enabling collaboration are as important, if not more, than the innovations that solve justice problems. The capacity to collaborate should be integral to any act of changemaking. Only then will we see rapid proliferation of ideas that can truly serve justice.

To develop the capacities and conditions for collaboration, it will require organisations and individuals to operate as social architects, capable of breaking the mould of what has gone on before to introduce new ideas, inject new energy and curate spaces in a way that allows for existing actors to collaborate and new actors to enter. These social architects must lead the task of building a shared infrastructure for the field, where resources are shared and serve to strengthen or amplify each organisation’s existing efforts. 

Evolving legal education into justice education

Despite its orientation towards developing legal practitioners, legal education has always had a broader impact. Countless civil society leaders, political leaders, CEOs and public intellectuals are products of law schools. This has a lot to do with their orientation towards public service, critical thinking and multidisciplinary studies. However, the time has now come for legal education to embrace its true potential – to equip young people with the skills and knowledge not just to understand and navigate our legal systems for a few, but to engineer better systems for everyone. 

We cannot ignore the fact that we exist in an environment where most citizens do not have access to justice. Training students to understand the laws but also ensure justice in a variety of different contexts is vital. This cannot happen with minor iterations of the old models of legal education. We must reimagine legal education by drawing inspiration from the evolution of other models around the world. Justice education should bring to society as many entrepreneurs, changemakers, community paralegals and systems thinkers as it does practitioners. A promising start in this direction has been made by the South Asia Network for Justice Education (SANJE), which aims to bring together educators and experts from diverse fields to create a transformative pedagogy that can empower everyone from law students to legal professionals at all levels. 

In 1987, Padma Bhushan NR Madhava Menon created the national law university model, beginning with the National Law School of India University in Bengaluru. That model has made its mark, launching over 23 national law universities and creating a new generation of corporate general counsel, law firm partners, senior advocates and high court judges since the early 2000s. Initiatives like IDIA seek to make the new models more inclusive and impactful. Now we need to see the next generation of innovations from within the law schools to achieve the goals of justice education.

Shifting mindsets at a societal level

A significant number of initiatives are focused on building awareness about rights and enabling legal aid support for marginalised groups, especially women and Dalit communities. Their efforts range from organising awareness training and workshops, building apps that offer information, creating helplines, and building a network of paralegals or lawyers who can assist in securing justice. However, for ‘wicked problems’ like gender justice, the core issue lies in the societal mindset –  the shared, unstated beliefs and assumptions about women and their roles.   

We might instinctively believe that societal mindsets are harder to change than anything else about a system. But the truth is that there’s nothing physical, expensive or even slow about the process of paradigm change. In a single individual, it can take place in a millisecond. All it takes is a click in the mind, a falling of scales from eyes, a new way of seeing. However, the process of changing the mindsets of whole societies is another matter – they fiercely resist change. Lessons from history tell us that it requires fundamentally different strategies than merely awareness building or mass sensitization. Central to such strategies is identifying the anomalies and failures in the existing mindset – why it is not working for anyone (not just women) – and presenting an alternative new reality by inserting people with a different mindset in places of public visibility and power. Efforts to change societal mindsets need changemakers to model a new system, which takes them outside the system and forces them to see it as a whole.

Resourcing justice innovation

Justice innovation is very poorly resourced the world over. Partly due to the strong association of justice delivery with state responsibility and partly as a result of the fear of associating with rights-based work, there is very little non-state institutional funding for legal literacy, affordable legal services, dispute resolution and rights and entitlements. In India, this trend has become even more marked, with hardly any CSR funding or family philanthropic funding going to justice innovation. Only 18% of AP20 initiatives have raised any kind of institutional funding and 40% identified money as the number one resource they need. 

While much work needs to be done to unlock more institutional funding in the sector, we also need to see more creative ways of resourcing law and justice initiatives. We eagerly await both innovative fundraising models such as community fundraising, powerful campaigns and peer support, now visible in other sectors, as well as inventive ways to manage resources more efficiently such as shared data resources, shared networks and long-term volunteering strategies. Creative funding models, such as membership-based ones, can also build community trust and accountability. Building on the experience and example of organisations like Amnesty International and Greenpeace, the Internet Freedom Foundation has shown the way by implementing such a model that gives members more oversight over their work, thereby naturally increasing their ownership and participation.

Increasing the representation of women in law and justice

Globally, women’s participation in the workforce is 48%. In India, this drops to a woeful 27%. India ranks 120 among 131 countries in female labour force participation rates as per World Bank’s 2017 India Development Report. Only 14% of the country’s elected Members of Parliament are women, compared to, say, 24% of the members of the House of Representatives in the United States, not to mention the new Vice President, Kamala Harris. Corporate India has also failed to bring more women to the top. Of every 100 CEOs and managing directors of companies listed on the National Stock Exchange, only about 3 are women. Sharpen that lens to the justice field, and the picture is even grimmer. In our independent history, only 8 women have been appointed as judges of the apex court so far, while the 25 high courts in the country have had only 78 women judges out of 685 (as on August 1, 2020). Amongst AP20 initiatives, 37% of the justice innovators were women.

Clearly, concerted efforts need to be made to bring more women into the fold. Though many teams have co-founders or team members as women, it would be incredible to have this trend turn the majority into women, because the future, as they say, is female.