NCERT’s new Social Sciences textbook for Class 8, curiously released close to the end of the academic session, is yet another instance of the ongoing, selective targeting of the judiciary.
The new textbook introduces the judicial system to an audience of 13 and 14-year-old children, as being internally plagued with challenges of massive backlog and corruption at various levels in a vacuum, lacking any form of nuance, context, or sensitivity required in primary education. NCERT’s exercise of updating its curriculum appears to betray the very objective it set out to achieve for these textbooks: to be a “judicious balance between direct instruction and opportunities for exploration and inquiry”. At the time of writing this piece, reports indicate that the textbook has been temporarily shelved or withdrawn, with the section on the judiciary being recalled.
The chapter titled ‘The role of the Judiciary in our Society’ gives an overview of the concept of justice in the Preamble, explains the connection between law and justice, introduces procedural and substantive justice, and the importance of the independence of the judiciary. However, after a brief overview of the unified structure of the judicial system and without any requisite context or sensitisation to its contents, in a sub-section titled ‘challenges faced by the judicial system’, it goes on to describe (a) the backlogs under the epithet “justice delayed is justice denied” and (b) corruption in the judiciary.
The chapter is not only disingenuous in its selective description of the challenges faced by the judiciary, but hugely misleading and insensitive in its overall framing. It gives data on pendency at the Supreme Court, High Court and district level and states that some cases even “remained unresolved for more than 50 years!” to provide shock-value, without offering any nuance on judge strength, budgetary and infrastructure constraints – the latter of which, all fall within the exclusive domain of the government. The passing reference to the “lack of an adequate number of Judges, complicated legal procedures, and poor infrastructure”, means little, with no nuance as to why those factors exist and due to whose inaction. This comes in the backdrop of the fact that the Central government routinely keeps recommendations for appointment of judges pending and continues to allocate a meagre 0.08% of the Union Budget towards Law and Justice (an even smaller portion of which is towards judicial infrastructure).
Describing the real issue to be the duration taken for a case to be resolved in court, the chapter conveniently affords credit to the government for taking “steps to ensure courts can resolve cases quickly”, by citing the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita 2023 as an example of reforming outdated legal procedures.
Conspicuously absent in this chapter, however, is all the ways in which the State contributes to pendency – its failure to institutionalise judicial impact assessment despite numerous judicial and policy recommendations to do so and the various special legislation that create multiple statutory remedies and fast-tracked timelines that further clog court dockets, without the corresponding investment in infrastructure or increasing judicial strength. The State, undoubtedly, is the biggest litigant – generating, sustaining and prolonging litigation, routinely.
The reality of the situation is that the State has done very little in terms of comprehensive judicial reforms in the last 30 years, apart from the tribunalisation of justice – by which it excluded material and essential resources (electricity, telecom, forest and natural resources, etc) from the purview of the courts. Any meaningful discussion on reforms of judicial infrastructure or increasing judicial strength across courts in India has always been initiated at the behest of the courts – who have been compelled to address these on the judicial side, for sheer survival of the system – and not the executive. Every meaningful reform relating to the district judiciary ranging from pay scale, pension, conditions of service, or infrastructure has similarly been achieved as a result of compulsion by judicial order.
Additionally, it is the Supreme Court and High Courts, through their various committees, and sub-committees, that analyse and frame policy to tackle pendency, arrears, court procedure, case management, etc. Yet, the chapter paints a very obviously stilted picture, with the sub-text: ‘the judiciary is struggling, but the government is trying its best to bail it out’.
The section on corruption in the judiciary is far more insidious in its framing, but follows the same script. With no mention of corruption as an evil in other spheres of public life, it squarely places the judiciary at the centre of it, relying almost entirely on a partial quote from a speech by a former Chief Justice of India as a self-indictment of the system:
“Sadly, there have been instances of corruption and misconduct that have surfaced even within the judiciary. Such occurrences inevitably have a negative impact on public confidence, potentially eroding faith in the integrity of the system as a whole. However, the path to rebuilding this trust lies in the swift, decisive, and transparent action taken to address and resolve these issues…”
Conveniently omitted in the quote, however, is the next sentence where he goes on to say:
“In India, when such instances have come to light, the Supreme Court has consistently taken immediate and appropriate measures to address the misconduct."
Instead, the chapter follows the quote with the claim that it is the government that is cleaning house: “efforts are constantly being made at the state and Union levels to build faith and increase transparency in the judicial system, including through the use of technology, and to take swift and decisive action against instances of corruption wherever they may arise."
The use of statistics to project objectivity here too, is far from innocuous: there’s little justification for why a Class 8 chapter specifically states that the Centralized Public Grievance Redress and Monitoring System (CPGRAMS) received 1,600 complaints between 2017-2021, but fails to mention numbers relating to basic aspects of judicial functioning – the number of courts across India, the sanctioned strength of the judiciary, the number of judgments it has passed. There isn’t even a whisper on the concept of public interest litigation (PIL) – and the expansion of fundamental rights that this innovation by the courts is credited for, beyond mere lip service.
A look at the Textbook Development Team - those that offered guidance, contributed and reviewed the content of the new curriculum - reveals that only one member is connected to the specialised legal field, with the other members being from the pure social sciences (history, political science, geography, etc). Listed under the heading of ‘contributors’, is the co-founder of a private legal policy think-tank, which to its credit has routinely consulted and advised the government on various legislative reforms – including successive efforts to introduce the Tribunals Act and its allied Rules (which have been struck down by the Supreme Court on no less than four occasions); advising on the Insolvency Bankruptcy Code; consulting on various State laws relating to rights of gig-workers; drafting the Aadhar Act; contributions to the data protection framework in India; among others.
It is only fair then that this private body bears some share of the criticism levelled against this insensitive and incomplete image created of the judiciary for the consumption of teenage school children. It belies the question: what pedagogical skills do such private organizations offer for a revamp of the NCERT curriculum? I ask this, because in the recent past, there has been an increasing reliance by the judiciary itself on private entities and partners in shaping reform and policy relating to its own performance – with courts partnering with private parties, to rehaul its everyday processes and functioning. The NCERT chapter in question indicates that perhaps this heightened institutional access afforded to such private organisations, deserves closer scrutiny – into concerns regarding the involvement and role of such organisations, their agendas, their data sharing policies and the source of their funding.
Our citizenry, and its youth especially, deserve to be informed and critical of our institutions, including the judiciary. The ability to question authority and those that hold power in institutions is paramount. The hyper-selective context and unnuanced manner in which the government-syllabus NCERT textbook introduces the judiciary, however, is what requires a serious rethink. We have to ask ourselves: is this the manner in which we first introduce the third pillar of our democratic country to young teenagers in schools? It certainly is disrespectful of the only institution – the everyday business of which is most transparently available and trackable: through its public cause lists, judgments, Supreme Court Annual Reports (which consolidate data even of the district judiciary) and now the National Judicial Data Grid which provides real time data on disposal and pending cases. Very little can be said about what business the executive,or a government department conducts in the course of one day, let alone everyday, with the same level of granularity.
There is no denying that there is much to be done to reform the judiciary and our justice system, but to introduce it to the youth of our country – children that are barely even 14 years old - through an incomplete and misleading picture, is a disservice that undermines its integrity. The recall of the chapter is definitely a favourable outcome, but the fact that such a chapter could come to be published, in itself, is of grave concern.
K Parameshwar is a Senior Advocate at the Supreme Court of India.