Pendency at Hospitals Vs Courts: A Comparison- Imparting Justice Vs Health

Justice and Health- Both are crucial for happiness of the living beings as well as society as a whole.  Hospitals are full of patients and so are courts with litigants. None of the people go to hospital and courts happily and everyone invariably wants early relief.

   Once a patient visits hospital, he will ponder over about the benefit of the visit. So is the person visiting the courts. Did they were imparted justice?

      None of patient, who visits hospital, comes back without treatment. Doctor gets few minutes to decide. Most of the time, for the investigations and the treatment few visits are required. But there is no pendency. In Government hospitals, even appointments are not given. A doctor sitting in outdoor will see hundreds of patients. On emergencies night duties, doctor will not be able to count how many he/she has stabilized or numbers treated.

      Even in such chaotic systems, doctor can be punished, dragged to courts or assaulted for unintentional mistakes, that are  almost always secondary to load of patients or inept infrastructure.

      The work at hospital continues day and night, 24 hours and 365 days, despite almost always lesser number of doctors and required manpower. Systems in hospitals  are designed and maintained meticulously   to have no pendency what-so-ever situation is.   Larger number of patients go back home treated and very few unfortunate patients are unable to recover, but still whatever is required- is done invariably.

        Justice is needed for satisfaction of soul and peaceful mind, is of same importance what is to the health of body. Justice delayed gives a sense of hurt and pain to soul. Pendency in courts simply reflects the grave injustice people are living with.

44 million pending court cases: How did we get here?

       There are about 73,000 cases pending before the Supreme Court and about 44 million in all the courts of India, up 19% since last year.

According to a 2018 Niti Aayog strategy paper, at the then-prevailing rate of disposal of cases in our courts, it would take more than 324 years to clear the backlog. And the pendency at that time was 29 million cases. Cases that had been in the courts for more than 30 years numbered 65,695 in December 2018. By January this year, it had risen more than 60% to 1,05,560.

Grave injustice for medical professions:

1.   A doctor making wrong diagnosis (gets few minutes to decide) can be prosecuted, but courts giving wrong verdicts (get years to decide) are immune?

   2. Compare the remuneration of lawyers to doctors. Doctors gets few hundreds to save a life (often with abuses) and lawyers can get paid in millions (happily).

   3. Doctors treat the body and larger is still not fully known about mechanisms. Still doctors can be blamed for unanticipated events. Whereas  law is a completely known and written subject.

   4. If health is citizen’s right so should be a timely justice.

         Despite doing so much for patients, still people’s behaviour to doctors and hospitals is not respectful. Doctors are punished for slight delays and people and courts intolerant to unintentional mistakes. But people can’t behave in the same manner to courts and legal system and tolerate the blatant injustice for years.    

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