Courtrooms beneath cobwebbed clocks, the question lingers: how long can a fast-moving economy survive a slow-moving justice?

By Ravishankar Kalyanasundaram

A third of India’s decade-old tax cases in courts haven’t even had a single hearing — narrates an impactful and sobering analysis in Business Standard. It’s a very good one, and the media should bring more like this. Because behind those statistics stand the litigants in waiting — businesses that have grown old in the queue, entrepreneurs who began with hope and now mark time by adjournments.

Take Texas Instruments. After a decade of fighting both the tax department and time itself, the company finally won its case. But ten years is a long journey — long enough for technologies to evolve, competitors to change, and perhaps even for the original dispute to lose relevance. By the time the verdict came, the world it was meant for had moved on.

And this is no anomaly. Across India, nearly a third of tax disputes have crossed the ten-year mark without a hearing. The files grow thicker, the dockets longer, and the patience of those waiting thinner by the day.

The Calendar Becomes the Verdict

Time has quietly become the most powerful litigant in India. From a widow awaiting road-accident compensation to a minister accused of unexplained wealth, every case ages like bureaucracy itself. The Satyam accounting fraud, once a corporate earthquake, wound its way through courts long after the company had been rescued and reborn. The Tamil Nadu disproportionate-assets cases drifted across benches and appeals until politics itself changed colour.

Justice here does not arrive; it matures. We speak of pendency the way we speak of monsoon — unpredictable, overdue, yet expected. A generation of citizens has learnt that in India, even when you win, you wait.

The Price of Delay

In business, time is capital. A decade-long dispute locks up refunds, depresses valuations, and drives away investors. Each hearing postponed adds a line to the balance sheet — “contingent liability”, that polite phrase for uncertainty.

The longer a case drags, the smaller its purpose becomes. By the time a verdict is delivered, the factory might have shut, the law might have changed, and the executives who once cared have moved on. A few months ago, the reversal of a multi-billion-dollar industrial deal — six years after it was cleared — left investors wondering if Indian justice works to a different calendar altogether.

In a world where products age in months and technology in weeks, ten-year litigation is economic archaeology.

Elsewhere, Time Is the Law

Other nations treat judicial time as a public asset. Singapore, for instance, runs a fully digital system with strict timelines. Its Small Claims Tribunal even uses AI tools to help citizens prepare filings and gauge likely outcomes — not to replace judges, but to spare them paperwork. Adjournments there are rare, and delay comes at a cost.

The UK’s Commercial Court functions on fixed timetables; the Netherlands’ e-Courts close most cases online. In parts of the US, software tracks every commercial case and automatically alerts judges if deadlines slip. These systems move because they are built to move — designed for efficiency, not endurance.

India, in contrast, has built one of the world’s largest judicial engines but forgot to add a clock.

Why India Needs Its Own Commercial-Tax Courts

We already have tribunals like the ITAT, yet they float in isolation, weighed down by appeals and adjournments. What we lack is a connected, time-bound architecture.

Imagine Commercial-Tax Courts mandated by statute to decide within two years. Adjournments limited, penalties real, proceedings digital from start to finish. Judges assisted by AI that summarises pleadings and checks precedents, freeing them for what machines cannot do — judge fairly.

If India can match billions of GST invoices in real time, it can surely match hearings to dates. The technology exists; the will is what’s missing.

The Politics of Delay

Delay has patrons. A slow judiciary serves those in power, allowing them to punish without verdict or protect without closure. For the bureaucracy, every pending file is safety. For the politician, every pending case is leverage.

That’s why judicial reform rarely travels beyond committee reports. We have learnt to live with an overloaded system because it shields as much as it exposes. In India, delay has become a constitutional habit.

Technology as Redemption

Yet this could be the moment to break that habit. The e-Courts Mission already digitises filing and listings. A next-generation layer could bring in predictive scheduling, AI summaries, and public dashboards showing pendency by judge, court, and category. Transparency, after all, is the first disinfectant.

Imagine if every High Court were required to display its oldest 100 cases — names visible, reasons listed. The embarrassment alone would accelerate reform.

Justice doesn’t have to move at the speed of an algorithm, but it should at least keep pace with life.

Justice as Infrastructure

We often speak of roads, ports, and power grids as the foundations of growth. But justice is infrastructure too — invisible yet indispensable. Investors look at courts as much as they look at tax holidays. No amount of incentives can offset the anxiety of unpredictability.

If commercial disputes outlive the companies involved, the phrase “ease of doing business” becomes hollow. And when citizens stop expecting timely verdicts, democracy begins to decay from within.

The Human Wait

Behind every case number stands someone who has stopped counting. The accident victim who never received her dues. The entrepreneur whose funds are locked in a tax demand older than her child. The official still defending a decision made two governments ago.

They are not statistics; they are lives stalled in procedural traffic. Each day of delay is a quiet betrayal.

The Thought That Lingers

India doesn’t need miracles — just momentum.

A dedicated, digital, and time-bound commercial-tax judiciary could be our next great reform. It would cost less than a new expressway but travel farther — carrying credibility, capital, and faith.

Justice delayed is not merely justice denied.

It is growth deferred, trust diminished, and faith quietly withdrawn.

And faith, once lost, takes longer to restore than even our longest pending case.