LAW & SOCIETY April 22, 2017 vol lII no 16 EPW Economic & Political Weekly 10 Data for the total number of civil cases filed in India dating back to 2005 is available in the various editions of Court News, published by the Supreme Court on a quarterly basis (though the data is not always the latest). 1 Table 1 collates the data for the absolute number of civil cases filed every year in all the high courts and all district courts in India. After an initial rise, the number of cases in both the high courts and the dis- trict courts seem to have plateaued out, and then started to decline around 2013, the slight uptick in 2016 notwithstanding. The same, however, cannot be said for criminal cases, as Table 2, comparing criminal cases filed in the high courts and the district courts during 2005–16, shows. The steady increase in criminal cases is in clear contrast to the plateauing and decline in civil cases in India. This has meant that criminal cases are forming a greater percentage of cases filed in courts Alok Prasanna Kumar (alok.prasanna@ vidhilegalpolicy.in) is an advocate based in Bengaluru and a visiting fellow at the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy. Are People Losing Faith in the Courts? Alok Prasanna Kumar Table 1: Total Number of Civil Cases Filed in High Courts and District Courts, 2005–16 Year Total Civil Cases Filed Total Civil Cases Filed in All High Courts in All District Courts 2005 10,82,492 40,69,073 2006 10,75,878 40,12,250 2007 10,44,534 37,55,019 2008 11,05,380 40,51,705 2009 11,95,739 41,41,463 2010 12,50,351 42,45,397 2011 13,17,982 43,54,952 2012 12,65,144 45,55,808 2013 13,07,501 43,50,668 2014 11,91,126 40,75,524 2015 10,79,095 37,17,856 2016 10,80,391 38,82,289 Table 2: Total Number of Criminal Cases Filed in High Courts and District Courts, 2005–16 Year Total Criminal Cases Total Criminal Cases Filed in All High Courts Filed in All District Courts 2005 4,60,398 1,31,94,289 2006 5,06,028 1,16,11,462 2007 5,23,941 1,14,09,828 2008 5,63,326 1,03,32,517 2009 5,83,743 1,28,23,735 2010 6,14,174 1,37,58,914 2011 5,69,531 1,36,43,234 2012 6,48,617 1,35,64,472 2013 7,06,543 1,43,17,641 2014 6,97,484 1,52,21,030 2015 6,83,742 1,52,21,865 2016 7,19,597 1,64,22,909 Contrary to popular belief, there is no litigation explosion. The data from the courts themselves suggests that fewer civil cases are being filed while criminal cases have been steadily increasing. This suggests that litigants are approaching the courts in fewer numbers, and may be resorting to other methods to resolve disputes. It may also be possible that the increase in criminal litigation could be attributed to the use of criminal law to resolve civil disputes. A trailer for the Hindi film Jolly LLB 2 has a voice-over direly intoning the crisis in the Indian judiciary—3.5 crore cases pending, and only 21,000 judges to clear them (Fox- StarHindi 2017). Yet, the voice of actor Akshay Kumar assures us, whenever two Indians have a dispute, they still tell each other, “See you in court.” The “Jolly LLB” series of films have probably done more than most in unpacking the many failings and shortcomings of our judicial system, and this trailer reassures us of the larger theme of the film; that the court is still where you must go to obtain justice in this country. It repeats, some- what unthinkingly, the claim made by many judges, lawyers, policymakers and politicians: “the people” have faith in the judiciary. Do they? A variant of this question was raised in an important paper written by Eisenberg et al (2013). Examining the data relating to civil litigation in the lower courts in India, they concluded that, contrary to popular myths of a “litigation explosion,” the rate of civil litigation in India is not as much as it should be for a country of its population and economic growth. The explanation they hinted at was that the high back- logs and the time it would take to clear the existing caseload were probably deterring litigants from approaching the courts. They looked specifically at data for high courts and district courts during 2005–10, but has anything changed in the seven years since? It has—but only for the worse. Falling Rates of Civil Litigation In the last few years, following the publi- cation of Eisenberg et al’s paper in 2013, the number of civil cases filed per year has fallen in the district courts and in the trial courts in India (Prakash 2015).