If Law Minister Veerappa Moily has his way, horror stories of years, even decades, spent waiting for a court verdict may soon be a thing of the past.

In an interview to a national daily this week, Moily said his ministry is planning to set up 5,000 new courts in the next three years, each working in three shifts to clear a backlog of  27.4 million cases pending in trial courts.

The Moily ministry’s roadmap for judicial reforms sees court cases resolved in just a year. At present, some cases drag on for 15 years or more.

Also in the pipeline are time limits for delivering verdicts, laptops for trial court judges and retired judges pitching in with their time.

Some say these measures are necessary in a country which suffers from what the Chief Justice of India called a “chronic shortage of judicial officers“.

K.G. Balakrishnan is in favour of appointing more judges and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has called for quickly filling up High Court vacancies.

The law minister is also looking at reducing the number of cases filed on behalf of the government while others say there is a need to screen the rising number of public interest litigations.

Some even advocate plea bargaining, saying it could play a part in reducing the backlog of cases.

Reforms in the judiciary could also make India a better investment destination. Separate commercial courts or specialized chambers in existing courts could reduce the time and cost of commercial contract enforcement, the World Bank said in a report in June.

Will the Moily roadmap help revamp the Indian judicial system?

India’s law minister on Tuesday was forced to defer the introduction of the Judges (Declaration of Assets and Liabilities) Bill because of strong protests from the opposition as well as his own party members.

For once, they raised their voices in unison against the provision that while judges are required to declare their assets before a designated authority, they are protected from public scrutiny and questioning.

A hotly contested section of the Bill says: “no judge shall be subjected to any inquiry or query in relation to the contents of the declaration by any person”.

Congress party’s own leaders have objected, saying the proposed law could violate the Right to Information Act that has empowered people and helped expose corruption.

It has invited scorn from lawyers, too: well-known lawyer Ram Jethmalani has described it as “a conspiracy in corruption” that would make people suspicious of the judiciary and places the latter “on a higher pedestal than any other public servant in the country”.

Law Minister Veerappa Moily has said the government was working on more comprehensive judicial reforms and that this was only a first step.

But until then, should our revered judges deserve special treatment? Why should they be above the law that governs other people in power and, indeed, the rest of the country?

Two images have seared themselves into my mind. The first is the brutal treatment meted out to a young girl working as a domestic maid in Gurgaon. I didn’t really know what beaten black-and-blue meant. Until I saw her photograph.

The other image was even more nauseating by virtue of being captured on video. Students armed with sticks rained blows on other students in Tamil Nadu as the police merely looked on.

Violence in domestic and student life is not something new. But what hit me was the nonchalance of the police — it was so in contrast with my own wincing reaction I could not shrug the image off.

Over the years, we have learned to settle personal scores with violence. It is almost a rite of passage. In almost every family, there is someone who has earned bragging rights for having beaten up somebody.

Is violence so much a part of Indian life? Our epics are full of violence in the service of a ‘just’ cause. But is being violent part of our cultural DNA? Probably not.

The woman charged with beating up the young girl tried to justify it — she had lost patience trying to cope with the pressures of family and urban living.

But the excuse is unacceptable in civilised society.

The police were being blasé about the bloodshed probably because they have been known to reduce crime rates by the simple expedient of not noticing it. Moreover, they are desensitised to violence since they see and participate in so much of it.

These two incidents could be seen as senseless acts of cruelty by a few people stooping low. As such they are just titillating. But they could also be seen as part of a larger pattern.

In fact, I wonder if the policemen and the woman can be considered victims in a sense.

Police in India are understaffed, overworked and underpaid. And the judiciary is bogged down by the weight of almost 350 million cases pending countrywide.

If people believe they can’t get their due by going to the police or to courts, it could lead to a state of endemic violence in society and a consequent deadening of senses to it.

Further, this logic could also be used to justify terror attacks.

It is safe to say with John Donne that no man is an island nor are our society’s predicaments ranging from a callous police force or bombings or more mundane manifestations of violence.

A newspaper reported that Indian cricket team captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni has applied for a 9 mm pistol. The headline ran ‘Dhoni wants a gun’. It would be more accurate if it read ‘Dhoni needs a gun’.

Perhaps we can guess why.