Can you sue God?

That was an article published in the Indian Express on 24 January 2009 by Bibek Debroy. He has an article on Rule of Law in today’s Financial Express.

• “If there is one sector which has kept away from the reforms process it is the administration of justice.” This is despite the problem being recognised. “There was, no doubt, a time when judiciary was highly respected by the people who had faith in the quality of justice, dispensed with promptly by the judges. Now the people have started loosing (sic) faith in the entire judicial system because of every day increasing arrears… It is a usual phenomenon to hear the conversation between suitors that they are not likely to reap the fruits of litigation during their life time. Eminent jurists have gone even to the extent of observing that our justice delivery system is cracking under the oppressive weight of delay and arrears. It has been repeated ad nauseam that to delay justice is to deny justice…. From time to time, public attention has been drawn to this sorry state of affairs and though the matter has been frequently discussed both in the Parliament and outside, yet the problem has defied any solution. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, while addressing a conference of State Law Ministers expressed alarm at the slow pace of the wheels of justice and pleaded for a change of attitude and a genuine effort to accelerate the judicial machine which according to him was rusty and outmoded.” The Gujarat High Court remarked that the life span of a civil case was, on an average, between 8 and 12 years.