Centres Of Excellence

To focus on new and emerging areas of research and education, Centres of Excellence have been established within the Institute. These ‘virtual' centres draw on resources from its stakeholders, and interact with them to enhance core competencies

Read More >>

Faculty

Faculty members at IIMB generate knowledge through cutting-edge research in all functional areas of management that would benefit public and private sector companies, and government and society in general.

Read More >>

IIMB Management Review

Journal of Indian Institute of Management Bangalore

IIM Bangalore offers Degree-Granting Programmes, a Diploma Programme, Certificate Programmes and Executive Education Programmes and specialised courses in areas such as entrepreneurship and public policy.

Read More >>

About IIMB

The Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIMB) believes in building leaders through holistic, transformative and innovative education

Read More >>

Maja Daruwala and Valay Singh present India Justice Report

Co-authors reflect on their observations with Prof. Trilochan Sastry as moderator at a special talk hosted by Centre for Public Policy at IIM Bangalore

20 JANUARY, 2023: Maja Daruwala and Valay Singh, the authors of the India Justice Report for 2022, presented their findings, with Prof. Trilochan Sastry as the moderator, this afternoon, as part of a special talk hosted by the Centre for Public Policy at IIM Bangalore.

Ms Maja Daruwala is the Chief Editor for the report and a Senior Advisor to The Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI). Valay Singh is the Project Lead.

“Uniquely, with a collective of organisations (CHRI, Vidhi, TISS-Prayas, Centre For Social Justice, Common Cause, and Daksh) working with a data partner, How India Lives, the resource was designed to bring together data from the various sub-systems that make up the justice delivery system and rank the capacity of states to deliver justice,” said Ms Daruwala, introducing the India Justice Report to the audience, comprising students and faculty, at IIM Bangalore. 

She summed up the crux of the report succinctly thus: “The performance and shortcomings of judiciary, police, prisons and legal aid – four major pillars of the justice delivery system – are often complained about or critiqued, but rarely has their collective capacity to deliver justice been objectively assessed. Recognising that democracy, the realisation of rights, development and economic growth are impacted by the degree to which the rule of law is upheld, and justice is accessible, the Tata Trusts initiated a unique research and advocacy project as a means of providing policy makers, researchers, and media with a holistic resource through which to discern and design policy interventions for reform.”

Describing The India Justice Report as “a benchmark for excellence for better governance every year in terms of justice delivery”, Ms Daruwala said they hoped to add more pillars or sub systems like Forensics and Human Rights soon. Emphasizing that the report looked at States, not at the Centre, she said they looked at budgets, human resources, infrastructure, work load, bias, etc when ranking the states into four clusters based on size, UTs and those under special powers so that like could be compared with like.

Noting that there is a huge amount of data and statistics with multiple agencies collecting data, she said as researchers they focused on 87 indicators and kept biases out of the scoring mechanism using law/ statute, government policy documents, policy statements, and logic, in the absence of any benchmark. She also touched upon the challenges of data like disappearing data, errors in recording data, lack of uniformity of terms, etc.

The full report can be accessed here.

Reality vs Rhetoric

Pointing out that the overall governance levels had been showing a steady fall year on year, Ms Daruwala said no state has a holistic justice delivery policy. One of the main findings of the report indicates low participation of women across the justice system. “You will find SC, ST and OBC women at the entry levels but as you go higher the glass ceiling kicks in and you will only see single-digit numbers,” she said.

Commenting that most of these findings are what most of us already know or, at least, suspect, she said the narrative gains strength because it is now backed by facts and figures.

On the subject of legal aid, she explained although 80 per cent of the country is eligible for legal aid, there is only one legal aid clinic for every 126 villages as opposed to the mandated one for a cluster of every five villages.

However, the India Justice Report notes that every sub system – police, prisons, legal aid and judiciary, across states, is trying to improve, in or the other area. For instance, according to the 2020 report, although Karnataka went from 6th to 14th rank overall, police went from 4th to 1st  position, and judiciary went from 16th to 12th position.  “The important thing is that the effort be made to improve,” remarked Ms Daruwala.