Fire exposes cracks in India’s justice

Picture this—a fire breaks out at a Delhi High Court judge’s outhouse, and when the smoke clears, charred piles of cash tumble into view. It’s not just a scandal; it’s a flare lighting up a judiciary that’s been creaking for years—too slow, too clogged, too brittle to hold India’s trust. The judge swears he’s clean, but the whispers don’t care—people hear corruption and nod, because faith in this system’s been leaking like a busted pipe.

You feel it in the numbers—45 million cases stacked up, a third festering over five years, choking jails and boardrooms alike. It’s not just about too few judges or crumbling courtrooms, though 6,000 empty seats and 4,000 missing halls don’t help. The real rot’s in the bones—rules so old they’d confuse a time traveler, tangling every step from summons to verdict in red tape. Digital fixes limp along, half-baked, while justice drowns in paper and delays stretch into decades.

This fire’s a wake-up slap—India’s courts can’t keep limping if the country’s gunning for economic heft. A system this shaky scares off business, locks up the innocent too long, and lets the guilty slip through cracks. The fix isn’t more cash or bodies—it’s torching the old playbook, setting hard deadlines, and letting tech actually work. Andhra’s own backlog mirrors this mess; we’ve seen it in Vizag’s land disputes dragging on. The judiciary’s not just burning—it’s been smoldering, and the stakes are too high to ignore.