The generations will forever remember the famous story of one of the greatest Hindi Writers Munshi Premchand’s PANCH PARMESHWAR. The story how beautifully narrated the essence of being an unbiased Panch (a judge/jury) even when there was a direct link and conflict between the person, who was voluntarily elected to be the jury and the litigant. The story depicted what was traditionally being followed by people in India since ages and was not borrowed from any other country or culture. The point I am trying to drive in here is that since time immemorial, even before Turks and British came to India, we had our own, well established judicial system starting from the very basic level of village known as Gram Panchayats. Since the most of the laws were not codified at that time hence, in general, they followed the guiding principles of natural justice and in all likelihood their functions should be understood as today what we call as Alternative Dispute Resolution processes.

When we go to a village in any corner of our country, what we observe that most of the disputes- be it related to family, property, land or otherwise- the villagers wish to settle them within the village at the behest of the local committee/panchayat and rarely move the court to seek any kind of legal relief.  This is the general trend and mindset of the Indians, at large, to settle their disputes among themselves involving the elders and seniors by seeking their guidance. Even today when the generations have become more literate and aware, they prefer to resolve matters amicably outside the court rather than fight cases in court and make things difficult for all. Many a times it happens that when clients come to lawyers for any piece of advice over a legal issues, they often ask for alternatives over going to the court, if there can be any.

Many commercial institutions realized that moving a court for commercial disputes are not financially a beneficial step for either of the parties and eventually they started incorporating the arbitration and mediation clauses in most of their commercial agreements. The trend was followed by the public sector units too and they too have started having arbitration and mediation clauses while floating new tenders and contracts.

The whole idea of having a parallel system which is faster and less complicated was thought of as early as 1899 by the then government an Act was promulgated around same time, the Indian Arbitration Act, to give effect to alternate dispute mechanism in India. The act based on the English legislation was just enacted to help and support the British traders and not the Indians. Later on, Alternative Dispute Redressal (ADR) mechanism was given more teeth and power and was included in the CPC in the year 1908 as amendment and section 89 with second schedule gave wide powers to the courts to refer the disputes to ADR mechanism. Then, The Indian Arbitration Act, 1899 and section 89 read with second schedule of Code of Civil Procedure, 1908 were two effective legislation to deal with arbitration. Post this there were many national and international developments related to ADR as the whole words understood that Judicial system had its own limitations and there was a great need and demand for a faster and more efficient mechanism of handling the disputes. Finally, India enacted its own Arbitration and Conciliation Act in 1996.

We, the common people of India, have been waiting for the day when we could see or hear the good news that our judicial system has gone online. When we say online, we mean really online- meaning the court hearings are happening in virtual mode. Although this was expected to happen as a natural progression of technological evolution but was forced to happen due to the effect of pandemic and judges, lawyers and courts were forced to go online and conduct the court procedure online through videoconferencing. There were some hiccups initially nevertheless the dust settled down and all embraced the new normal of conducting the judicial proceedings in online virtual mode with welcome open arms. Now, there comes a simple question why can’t we have online dispute resolution mechanism (ODR)? Certainly, we can have. There is no doubt about it. The right technology is there, the infrastructure is there, the people are ready to go for it and as far as my knowledge goes some of the institutions have already embraced it and started it.

When we can get every possible thing done online, be it ordering food to consulting a doctor from USA, then why can’t we settle our dispute sitting at our home?

Dispute arises because there is a difference in the opinion about a concept or about what is being comprehended between two parties and invariably disputes bring in lot of disharmony and bad blood between individuals and create unnecessary mental harassment and stress to both of them. It is a given fact that going to court causes more stress to the parties and if there could be any alternative way to reduce the heartburn then that must be welcomed by the society and in all way should be seen as evolution of the society at large, benefitting all. The world is opening up, the judiciary is opening up and now it’s the time that the people need to wake up and, welcome and embrace the ODR- Online Dispute Resolution, to help create a better society and more so to help themselves more than anybody else.