PUNJAB: Justice in India is often reduced to a privilege availabile omly to those who can afford it. For millions – undertrials, migrant labourers, women escaping violence, children in conflict with the low, victims of trafficking – the courtroom remains a distant and intimidating space that demands resources they do not possess. While the Constitution promises equality before the law, the lived experience of the poor exposes a system where rights exist in theory but rarely materialise in practice.
Free legal aid was conceived as the bridge between constitutional ideals and this harsh reality. Over the years, India has built a strong normative and institutional framework for legal aid. Yet despite judicial vision, legislative support , and an extensive administrative structure, the legal aid system continues to underperform. Not because it lacks ambition, but because it lacks the political will, financial commitment, and administrative coherence required to translate principle into practice. The gap today is not one of ideas; it is a crisis of execution.
What distinguishes India’s legal aid story is that it emerges not from charity but from constitutional morality. Long before Article 39-A was added to the Constitution, the Supreme Court had declared legal aid intrinsic to Article 21’s guarantee of life and personal liberty. In M.H. Hoskot, Hussainara Khatoon, Khatri, Sheela Barse and Suk Das, the Court made it clear that fair procedure, a core requirement of Article 21, is impossible without legal representation. Legal aid was thus elevated from benevolence to a fundamental right. This jurisprudence placed India firmly within the global human rights community, aligning its approach with the UDHR, the ICCPR, and most notably the UN Principles on Legal Aid (2012), all of which insist that justice cannot depend on economic capacity.
Parliament reinforced this vision through the Legal Services Authorities Act, 1987, which created a multi-tiered legal aid structure involving NALSA, State and District Legal Services Authorities, para-legal volunteers, legal aid clinics and Lok Adalats. The architecture exists. It is, on paper, one of the most comprehensive legal aid systems in the world. And yet it fails to fulfil its own promise.
The statistics reveal the depth of the problem. Former Chief Justice U.U. Lalit highlighted a striking contradiction: nearly 70 per cent of Indians live below or just above the poverty line, yet only around 10-12 per cent of criminal cases involve NALSA-appointed counsel. The rest hire private lawyers, often at enormous personal cost, because the legal aid system is perceived as slow, inconsistent, or inaccessible. The consequence is visible in overcrowded prisons across the country, where thousands of undertrials remain incarcerated simply because they lacked timely legal assistance. The crisis that Hussainara Khatoon exposed more than four decades ago continues to echo today.
This crisis is compounded by a profound deficit in legal literacy. Many who are entitled to free representation – women, SC/ST communities, prisoners, victims of domestic and caste-based violence – do not know that legal aid exists, let alone how to access it. Legal aid offices in several districts operate with minimal staff, and many legal aid lawyers remain overburdened and underpaid, affecting the quality, consistency and seriousness with which cases are handled. The result is a system viewed with suspicion by those who need it the most.
The core challenge is uneven implementation. While the Legal Services Authorities Act envisioned a decentralised, robust national network, the functioning of legal aid varies drastically from one state to another. Some have built active legal aid clinics, community-based para-legal volunteer networks, and dedicated defence counsel systems. Others struggle with vacancies, limited budgets, weak coordination between institutions, and minimal grassroots visibility. Lok Adalats, initially a transformative idea, have increasingly became forums for routine settlement of compensation claims, rather than vibrant spaces for community-centred dispute resolution. Even the newly introduced Legal Aid Defence Counsel System (LADCS), an important step towards professionalising criminal defence for the poor, suffers from inconsistent rollout and funding shortages.
The deeper problem is political indifference. Legal aid cannot be treated as a peripheral welfare service that depends on the good will of judges, overworked lawyers, or sporadic NGO involvement. It must be understood as a core constitutional function. But India’s budgetary priorities say otherwise. Even with recent improvements, spending on legal aid remains a miniscule fraction of the national justice budget and far below international benchmarks. Genuine political recognition of legal aid as a public good, akin to healthcare or education is still missing.
The significance of legal aid is not procedural but profoundly social. For a woman seeking maintenance, a Dalit worker fighting wage theft, a trafficked child rescued from exploitation, or an undertrial prisoner worth less to the system than the paper on which his case file is printed, legal aid is not an abstract entitlement. It is the only route to dignity. That is why the conversation must shift from counting the number of cases handled to examining the quality of representation, the competence of legal aid lawyers, the trust the system builds within communities, and the actual impact on people’s lives.
If legal aid is to become transformative, India must invest in training, certifying, and monitoring legal aid lawyers; reform compensation structures to reward effort and expertise, embed clinical legal education into law schools ; and leverage technology – helplines, mobile apps, digital tracking systems to ensure accessibility. Most critically, the judiciary, police, prisons, and legal aid authorities must move beyond functioning as isolated institutions and work as an integrated justice system.
Ultimately, a right unknown is a right denied. India needs a national movement for legal literacy, rooted not in token awareness camps but in sustained community engagement through schools, panchayats, women’s collectives, SHGs, digital platforms and para-legal volunteers who function as the first responders of justice.
Every democracy is judged by the ease with which its most vulnerable can claim their rights. India’s legal aid framework was envisioned as the great equaliser – a promise that the State will stand beside those who stand alone. The Constitution is clear. The Supreme Court is clear. India’s international obligations are clear. What remains unclear is the political resolve to honour these commitments.
Legal aid is not a marginal reform but the foundation on which the legitimacy of the justice system rests. Without it, the constitutional promise of equality before the law becomes hollow. Strengthening legal aid is therefore a democratic imperative, not an administrative option. Legal aid must now become the instrument through which equality is not only declared but delivered. As James Baldwin reminded us, “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced”.
Prof (Dr) Jai Singh is Vice Chancellor of Rajiv Gandhi National University of Law, Punjab.
