Technology is often hailed as a tool to bridge the rural-urban divide, helping advocates access legal resources. However, lawyers in Tamil Nadu have been objecting to the mandatory e-filing system.
This highlights the ground reality that a significant digital divide persists, with many areas lacking reliable internet and digital infrastructure.
Though initiatives like setting up internet kiosks in remote regions exist to improve access, what more needs to be done by the government, the judiciary, and the legal fraternity to ensure technology truly democratises the legal profession and justice, making education, practice, and services accessible to aspiring lawyers and litigants nationwide?
-- K Maharani, Washermenpet, Chennai
These are days when some well-known senior advocates exchange information in open court on how many engagements they had that day, while thousands of young lawyers go home without a brief or money. It is a paradoxical situation in the legal profession: while trained lawyers are many, cases get concentrated with a few. This is also one cause for delay in disposal of cases.
The Bar Council of India is yet to evolve a mechanism by which a reasonable distribution of work is made. Recently, the Supreme Court suggested an honorarium for young lawyers for a certain period.
However, even in introducing technology and online hearings, the mighty urban elite can get good work, while their rural brothers are edged out of the system.
Proper training in law colleges and improved infrastructure in rural areas may be some solutions. But the larger question of leaving junior lawyers to fend for themselves will result in degeneration of the profession itself.
The Cauvery water dispute has again pitted Tamil Nadu and Karnataka against each other amid severe water scarcity.
While the final award and the Cauvery Water Management Authority framework prescribe the quantum of water to be released, they fail to lay down a clear distress-sharing formula that equitably distributes water during drought years by factoring in storage in the upper riparian state.
Do you believe the Authority, or even the Supreme Court, should revisit this aspect? In your view, can further legal or constitutional intervention help evolve a more equitable distress-sharing mechanism and provide a lasting solution during drought conditions?
-- Rajesh Kumar, Chetpet, Chennai
Inter-state water disputes are on the increase. Though the Constitution has provided a special mechanism for constituting Inter-State Water Disputes Tribunals, increased emotional appeals made both in states where rivers originate and in riparian states result in loss and damage to public property, besides affecting those residing in border areas.
When India and Pakistan can solve the Indus river-sharing problem except for occasional jingoistic speeches, one wonders why Cauvery water-sharing could not be solved even after half a century.
We need political statesmanship cutting across state borders and a realisation of the common good, alongside an effective river water disputes adjudication mechanism.