56: India Justice Report with Maja Daruwala and Valay Singh

The Elephant in the Room is my learning and listening project. Something that started out during a period of deep introspection and despair evolved to also becoming a passion project. But being passionate means always trying to do better and living up to the committed purpose - to shine a light on issues of inclusion & inequity. In this case it is about spotlighting the importance of access to justice for everyone in society. The partnership with the India Justice Report is also about getting ordinary citizens to understand the justice system better - so that they are better able to exercise their rights. My guests on this episode are Maja Daruwala, Chief Editor of the India Justice Report, and a barrister from Lincolns Inn and Valay Singh, Project Lead of the India Justice Report. We spoke about the purpose behind India's first ever ranking of states on their capacity to deliver justice. The report measures the structural capacity of state based instrumentalities of the justice system against their own declared mandates. We also spoke about 👇🏾👇🏾👇🏾 👉🏾 The reality that not everyone has the same experience of the justice system. For the most marginalised and vulnerable in any society, access to justice is often beyond their reach and always too costly 👉🏾 What really matters to citizens? Access to justice, speed of justice, the improvement of ground level infrastructure, locaslisation etc.... 👉🏾 Why women that are recruited into the justice system inevitably find themselves confined to the lowest rungs of the justice system 👉🏾 Lack of representation in the justice system and the importance of reflecting the population for the justice system itself must be just. The inability to change being indicative of prevalent bias in the system. 👉🏾 The fact that most citizens are not aware of their fundamental rights, because of lack of education on the same 👉🏾 COVID 19 and it's impact on the exacerbating inequalities across the justice system We also spoke about support from stakeholders, trends and what success would look like. Like to know more, listen here 👇🏾👇🏾 Common Cause India Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative DAKSH Tata Institute of Social Sciences - Prayas Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy How India Lives. #accesstojustice #sdg16 #benchmarkingforabetterfuture