Indian Judiciary is Dying

Bhabani Shankar Nayak

Structurally, the federal judicial system in India is organised from the lower courts and district and sessions courts to the High Courts and the Supreme Court. These courts derive their authority and legitimacy from the secular Constitution of India, which establishes a unified judicial system. The post-colonial judicial framework emerged from anti-colonial struggles led by the Indian working masses, who aimed to establish a constitutionally mandated unitary federal system to ensure the free, fair, and independent delivery of justice without any form of discrimination based on class, caste, gender, sexuality, religion, region, or socio-political status. This independent and impartial judicial system, based on Niti (rule of law) and Nyaya (justice), provided much-needed popular legitimacy to the Indian courts among the masses. Courts were regarded as above suspicion in the public eye, which gave them an invisible authority that enabled the judiciary to deliver justice without fear or favour.

However, the independence, legitimacy, and authority of the courts have declined over the years due to marketisation and corporatisation, communalisation, political compromises with authoritarian leadership, and religious bias invoked in the name of defending nationalism and mass sentiment in the delivery of justice.

The commercialisation and marketisation of legal practice have further ruined the delivery of justice in India as access and denial to justice and courts depends on the ability to pay for an experienced and well qualified lawyer. This market principles of accessibility to court of law based on purchasing power of the citizens undermined the very principles of universality of rule of law and justice. The rich and powerful find it easier to access to courts than the working poor. Therefore, majority of poor, marginalised and unprivileged social groups are suffering in Indian prisons due to the failure of courts in India. It allows ruling class intellectuals to argue that there is a link between poverty and crime.

Such a casual analysis not only criminalises working poor without any form of justification but also fails to understand the conditions created by the class, caste, gender, regional, urban and educational bias within Indian judicial practice.

The poor and marginalised are not criminals; rather, they suffer under a legal system that criminalises their everyday lives to legitimise the exploitation of their labour. This occurs within a capitalist social, economic, and political order that is fundamentally unfair, as it is built on exploiting profit from both labour and nature. The legalisation of such a system of delivering justice undermines the credibility of courts in India.

The unitary federal practice and centralised constitutional provisions allow the central government, its institutional provisions and higher courts to take certain autocratic measures to uphold the interests of capital over people that undermine both the federal structure and constitutional democracy in India. From the era of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi of the Congress Party to that of Prime Minister NarendraModi of the BharatiyaJanata Party, India has witnessed democratic degeneration, divisive and discriminatory politics which manifests within judicial practices through the erosion of the rule of law and the delivery of justice.

Both governing and non-governing Indian elites seek to maintain a weak and compliant judicial system that serves their interests and preserves their power through judicial means. Consequently, different forms of crime are allowed to flourish in the country. A compromised and criminal system relies on a criminalised society for its survival, whereas an independent, impartial, and strong judiciary challenges the interests of dominant classes and castes in India.

Back to Home Page

Frontier
Vol 58, No. 19, Nov 2 - 8, 2025