Legal Aid in India

For a country that call itself the world’s largest democracy, India has always had an uneasy relationship with the idea that justice should be free for those who cannot pay for it. The law exist, the court exist, and on paper the machinery for free legal assistance is fairly elaborate. Yet ask any law student who has spent a few weeks inside a district court, and they will tell you a different story- one of overworked panel lawyers, undertrials who have never met their counsel, and a system that promises equality before law but often delivers it only to those who can afford the wait. The gap between the text of the Constitution and the texture of daily court life is, in many ways the real subject of any honest account of legal aid in this country.