India does not merely suffer from excessive litigation; it suffers from excessive legislation of the wrong kind. Across sectors, Indian laws are long, densely layered and perpetually under interpretation.

What should function as clear instruments of governance increasingly resemble annotated manuals dependent on explanations, provisos, rules, notifications, circulars and judicial clarifications to be understood. The result is not legal certainty, but systemic confusion.

A significant portion of Indian litigation is not driven by factual disputes or wilful violations, but by uncertainty over what the law actually requires. Courts are repeatedly asked to decipher legislative intent rather than adjudicate wrongdoing. When the law itself is unclear, litigation becomes inevitable. This is not a stylistic drafting problem; it is a structural governance failure.

Indian statutes frequently combine excessive detail with fragmented delegation. Core obligations are scattered across parent Acts, subordinate rules, executive notifications and circulars, often issued years apart and amended repeatedly. Compliance becomes an exercise in interpretation rather than adherence.

Tax laws illustrate this sharply. Provisions on classification, exemptions, deductions and retrospective amendments have produced decades of disputes. Regulatory statutes are no different. Conflicting interpretations across High Courts are routine, leaving the Supreme Court to resolve issues years later. Even procedural laws, meant to simplify justice delivery, require constant judicial clarification to function at all.

Judicial time is a finite national resource. When courts are consumed by interpretative exercises, substantive justice slows. Millions of cases remain pending, many turning on narrow questions of statutory construction. The opportunity cost in terms of economic activity, public trust and institutional credibility is immense.

The Central Goods and Services Tax Act, 2017 provides a clear example. Key provisions governing input tax credit - particularly Sections 16 and 17 read with multiple rules and notifications - are drafted with layered conditions and cross-references. Frequent amendments through circulars and notifications have generated extensive litigation on basic interpretative questions, including constitutional challenges to Section 16(2)(c). Compliance costs rise not because tax rates are high, but because the law is difficult to decipher.

Environmental regulation tells a similar story. The Environment (Protection) Act, 1986 is largely skeletal, delegating wide powers to the executive. Substantive regulation occurs through a scattered web of notifications, office memoranda and clarifications issued by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change. The Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Notification, 2006 has been amended repeatedly through executive instruments rather than consolidated text. Exemptions often exist only in standalone office memoranda, many of which are later modified or withdrawn. Legal certainty depends on navigating a maze rather than reading a statute.

Reserve Bank of India (RBI) regulation presents another illustration. The applicable legal position is rarely found in a single document. It requires tracking master directions, master circulars, individual circulars and supersession notices. Determining what is in force at a given time often requires professional assistance, not because regulation is stringent, but because it is fragmented.

Labour law history reinforces the point. Under the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947, expansive and exclusion-laden definitions of "industry" and "workman" compelled decades of judicial clarification. Lawmaking effectively shifted from parliament to courts. This experience ultimately led to the consolidation of 44 labour statutes into four labour codes, acknowledging that legislative design itself had contributed to dispute.

Land acquisition law provides yet another telling illustration. The Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013 was enacted to replace the colonial 1894 regime with a fair and predictable framework. Yet, its structure is built around layered exemptions, carve-outs and parallel procedures. Core safeguards such as social impact assessment, consent requirements, urgency provisions and compensation are subject to shifting exceptions for infrastructure, industrial corridors, national security and sector-specific projects, further altered by executive notifications and state amendments. As the Supreme Court noted in Indore Development Authority v. Manoharlal (2020), repeated legislative interventions and complex transitional provisions have turned land acquisition into a field where “interpretation rather than application” dominates adjudication. Infrastructure projects frequently stall not because compensation is disputed, but because authorities, developers and courts disagree on which procedural pathway applies, illustrating how layered drafting converts governance into continuous interpretative litigation.

Other complex democracies have consciously chosen legislative restraint and clarity.

The United States Constitution originally contained about 4,500 words and even with amendments, remains under 8,000 words. It articulates principles and leaves operational detail to institutions. India’s Constitution began with approximately 1,17,000 words and now exceeds 1,40,000. While historical circumstances justified detail at inception, the drafting instinct it entrenched continues to dominate ordinary legislation.

The United Kingdom has enacted over 200 Statute Law Repeals Acts since 1969, systematically eliminating obsolete laws and consolidating fragmented legislation. Plain-language drafting is treated as a democratic value. Singapore enforces strict drafting manuals emphasising brevity, enforceability and clarity, supported by rigorous pre-enactment scrutiny. Australia and New Zealand have undertaken systematic regulatory simplification, periodic consolidation and principles-first drafting, leading to shorter and more coherent statutes.

Across jurisdictions, the lesson is consistent. Investors and citizens are not deterred by regulation. They are deterred by unpredictable and interpretative regulation. Clear laws reduce litigation; complex laws manufacture it.

Legal uncertainty raises compliance costs, delays projects and deters investment. Businesses price ambiguity into contracts. Regulatory unpredictability slows economic decision-making. Courts remain overburdened. Outcomes depend increasingly on interpretation rather than text, eroding public confidence in institutions.

Judicial reform alone cannot solve this problem. Faster courts will still be forced to interpret poorly drafted laws. Procedural efficiency cannot compensate for legislative ambiguity.

First, India needs mandatory legislative impact assessments. Every major bill should be accompanied by an evaluation of clarity, compliance cost, litigation risk and interaction with existing laws. Parliamentary Standing Committees must be expressly tasked with reviewing drafting quality and coherence.

Second, statutes should include sunset clauses and consolidation mandates. Endless amendments without periodic rewriting produce incoherence. The experience of the Income Tax Act, 1961, amended almost annually for decades, demonstrates how a statute can become unreadable. Periodic rewriting is functional necessity.

Third, delegated legislation must be disciplined. Subordinate rules should clarify statutory intent, not substitute it. Essential elements such as definitions, thresholds, exemptions and penalties must be settled in the statute itself. Parliamentary oversight of delegated legislation must be substantive.

Fourth, legislative drafting must be professionalised. Drafting is a specialised skill requiring training, institutional memory and accountability. Jurisdictions that legislate well invest heavily in legislative counsel. India must do the same.

Fifth, legal education must change. Legislative drafting should be a rigorous and compulsory subject in law schools. Clarity is not stylistic elegance; it is democratic necessity.

Law is not literature. It is a public instrument meant to guide conduct, reduce friction and resolve disputes. When laws become excessively elaborate, they cease to govern behaviour and instead generate interpretations and litigation.

India does not need fewer laws; it needs better laws. Laws that are clear in intent, restrained in language and honest about their limits. Until legislative quality is treated as seriously as legislative quantity, courts will remain clogged, compliance will remain costly and governance will remain inefficient.

All of this assumes one basic precondition: that Parliament has the time and willingness to legislate carefully, debate seriously and review periodically, instead of leaving courts to make sense of laws after the damage is done.

Sumeer Sodhi is an Advocate-on-Record at the Supreme Court of India.