Law of torts or civil wrong is an under-construction concept for most underdeveloped and developing countries like India itself. Due to its uncodified nature, its viability is constantly under question rather more than once helping it drift away to a box of its pre-existing fellow un-noticed rights. Let’s take a look at why the Civilians in India do not succeed in protecting their civil rights.
The most widely known reason for the inefficient utilization of Tort Law in India is its uncodified nature. Lawmakers do recognize the importance of codified laws but they can’t over-look the fact the law of torts is an ever evolving and developing law with steady growth rate and to try to codify it in the present will act as a hindrance to it reaching its full effectiveness in terms of protecting the rights of civilians not to forget it’d be equally as challenging to make that very code.
To add to the troubles, there is lack of uniformity and absolute certainty to the principles and doctrines of Tort Law. Due to the establishment of the British Court of law in India before independence, the tort law in India is mainly based on the English tort law derived from common law as we know it. But due to the different prevailing situations/ conditions of the legislation, these precedents set in England can’t always be applied. To help with this dilemma of less precedents to work with, In the M.C. Mehta v. UOI ruling, Supreme Court states that they have to evolve and lay down new principles and doctrines to come to terms with dealing with our ever growing industrialized economy. They also said India can’t be dependent on the judicial thinking to be bound by the precedents set by England or any other country forever for that matter, and that it’s time for Indian Law to establish its own jurisprudence. With this case, the court also seemed to establish the doctrine of absolute liability. Previously only doctrine of strict liability was known to us.
Another reason for the insufficient evolution of Law of Torts would be poverty and illiteracy rate of India. Judicial system in India has its expense a bit too high and one stretching over a long period of time due to fewer resources. It’s as visible as a dust storm, that due to these high and elongated expenses, most people can’t afford to enforce their civil rights by undergoing the costs of litigation even if they’re well aware of how they can save themselves from being wronged.
For example : If a person from the lower-middle income group has his right violated and decides to fight for it, he might end up paying more than twice the amount that he’d receive at the end as damages. The protection of his right eventually seems worthless to the person in question and he decides to drop it or goes through and fills self with regret over financial loss.
There is also a major lack of awareness among the mass in India, they don’t seem to bother enough to find out what their rights are and end up not fighting for violation of their civil rights under the impression that they don’t know if there is even legal protection against it.
From the above discussion, we can conclude that Law of Tort is not an unimportant or ignored law, but simply requires additional enactments to make it attainable by those who are wronged. The lack of success of the aggrieved to claim their legal rights in the court of law and move the court to seek redressal, is not just a result of under-appreciation of these rights but also include failure to proving claims, truthful testimony, expense of the court, etc. as means to have helped reach such an end.
It’s well within knowledge, that everything we discussed that acts as an obstruction for the aggrieved to get the required justice should be kept under observation and developed accordingly to help the target public.
When we are through with these obstacles, it’s not a shot in the storm to say that we must witness the number of fights in court for individual rights go up and less distress among the public who have had to go through the given infringement of rights. There are always going to be new hindrances but as long as we don’t cease the development of the law in harmony with the person development of the people, we should strive through the unknown whatever it may turn out to be.
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