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Indian Justice System Needs UPI Moment for , Says Supriya Sankaran
In a thought-provoking column published on , legal reform advocate Supriya Sankaran has called for a fundamental redesign of India’s , likening the necessary transformation to the revolution that Unified Payments Interface (UPI) brought to banking. Sankaran argues that the Indian judiciary must move away from —such as merely increasing the number of judges—and instead start from the perspective of the ordinary person seeking to resolve a dispute. The piece draws a sharp contrast between incremental improvements and a clean-sheet reimagining of how justice is delivered.
The Familiar Trap of More Judges
The column opens with a hypothetical scenario: a bill passed by the raising the ’s sanctioned strength from 34 to 38 judges as a response to mounting . Sankaran warns that adding judges is “the oldest reform instinct there is,” but one that produces diminishing returns. She draws a parallel with urban planners widening highways only to see new lanes fill with traffic. “When a system keeps producing the same result at any scale, the problem isn’t size. It’s design,” she writes.
For legal professionals, this observation cuts to the heart of the perennial debate over judicial vacancies. While the Bar and Bench consistently demand more judges, Sankaran suggests that capacity alone cannot solve the structural inefficiencies that plague case management. The real issue, she contends, is that every reform effort has been designed to make the court system work better, rather than to make the experience of resolving a dispute simpler for the parties involved.
Drawing Lessons from Banking’s Evolution
Sankaran traces the banking industry’s journey from branch expansion in the post-nationalisation era to digital automation in the 1990s and eventually to UPI in the early 2000s. Each phase solved a different problem: access, efficiency, and finally friction. Yet, she notes, even the shift to netbanking and mobile apps was still an extension of the bank’s internal systems outward to the citizen. “The real break came with UPI,” she explains. “It didn’t start by asking how to extend or improve the existing banking system. It started by asking how we might let a person pay her auto driver instantly, using nothing but a phone number.”
This insight forms the backbone of her argument. The difference between institution-centric and is profound. The first improves a process; the second starts from a clean sheet and redesigns roles, incentives, and information flows around the user. Indian courts, she observes, are currently moving through banking’s earlier stages simultaneously—adding judges, implementing , introducing AI transcription—but none of these address the deeper question.
The Critical Question
Sankaran poses the key question that, in her view, should drive every reform: “How might we help a person resolve their dispute and design everything else backward from there?” She gives concrete examples: a shopkeeper disputing a refund or a gig worker owed a week’s pay do not experience their problem as a “case.” They experience it as a disagreement they want resolved fairly and quickly. Yet the current system forces them to become experts in procedure before they can obtain a resolution.
The column references recent remarks by the Chief Justice of India at a conference, where he stated that “peace is not the absence of law and preserving a relationship between two disputing parties is its own form of justice.” Sankaran builds on this by proposing an even more radical vision: a platform that empowers parties to resolve their own disputes directly, with the option to escalate to or court only if fails. This approach trusts the individual to navigate their own disagreement, guided by tools and knowledge, rather than requiring an expert facilitator.
Three Pathways to Transformation
Sankaran outlines a three-pronged strategy for achieving a people-centric justice system. First, engage and learn from the people the system serves—, , , and already doing grassroots work. Second, orchestrate collaboration across justice agencies, government bodies, non-profits, and the private sector, because from a person’s perspective, a dispute is one integrated experience, not several institutional handoffs. Third, build continuous feedback loops so that the system learns from the people moving through it.
She is careful to acknowledge that none of this argues against more judges or against the current digitisation efforts under the . “Every people-centric leap stands on institutional progress before it,” she writes, noting that UPI could not have existed without the netbanking and ATM infrastructure banks spent a decade building. The question, she insists, is whether the legal system is also willing to ask the harder question and design everything from the user’s perspective.
Implications for the Legal Community
For lawyers, judges, and policymakers, Sankaran’s column challenges several entrenched assumptions. The legal profession often resists changes that reduce the need for , fearing loss of control or revenue. Yet the column suggests that higher-value legal work—advocacy, complex litigation, nuanced advice—will continue to thrive, while routine disputes could be resolved more efficiently without saturating court dockets.
The concept of a “UPI for justice” also raises practical questions about data privacy, equity, and the . Sankaran does not delve into these, but her framework implies that any platform must be designed inclusively, with offline fallbacks and multilingual access. The role of the judiciary would shift from , overseeing a system that channels disputes to the most appropriate resolution method.
Conclusion
The call for a UPI moment in Indian justice is a provocative and timely intervention. As the and continue to grapple with , Sankaran’s article reminds the legal community that technological upgrades alone will not deliver the quantum leap in access and experience that citizens deserve. Instead, reforms must begin with the person in need of justice, not with the institution that dispenses it. Whether the judiciary is ready to adopt such a clean-sheet approach remains to be seen, but the debate has now been framed in terms that every legal professional should consider.
