As cases continue to pile up in the courts, there is an urgent need for civil society to come up with ways and means of measuring the judiciary’s performance and to analyse the root causes for such delays.

In the last few months at DAKSH we have been working with a lot of big numbers. We are collecting data on all ongoing cases from 10 High Courts in India. We already have details for over five lakh case records from these High Courts, and this data grows every day.

Earlier this year, the DAKSH team interviewed ex–Chief Justice of India, M.N. Venkatachaliah. A renowned luminary of the Indian courts, Justice Venkatachaliah is well known for his immense contributions to the field of law in India.

he launch of the Rule of Law Project and website by DAKSH at Bhartiya Vidya Bhawan on Saturday, 7 February, 2015, was a gathering of well-wishers, members from the legal community, researchers, and citizens concerned with governance.

There is a consensus in popular and expert opinion that the Indian judicial system is facing a crisis.

A friend recalled something a friend of his had said on hearing how Joseph K, the protagonist of Kafka’s The Trial, waited outside the court not knowing what his crime is: “Why? Didn’t he know anyone inside?!” This anecdote is of course more than an anecdote.

Twenty four states, two thousand five hundred and fifty three unique values, all to be sorted into a 290 x 24 matrix. This was the December that Shiva and I faced.

As a part of the Rule of Law Project, Ramya and I were assigned the task of doing something which had never been done before. 24 High Courts, about 2000 different case types (each case is classified into a particular type by the Court.

In the process of unfurling our research method at The Rule of Law project it has been important to examine what data can help us frame information that can answer the question of what “delay” and “pendency” really means, outside of the anecdotal narratives that get thrown up both in the media and in reports of and by the courts themselves.

Just last week, the mother of all delayed cases – the Disproportionate Assets Case against former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa, under the Prevention of Corruption Act – has come to a head.