XKDR Newsletter - Issue 15
Financing infrastructure • Cheque disputes • Helping litigants in debt disputes • MSME procurement • LLM in India • Monetary policy strategy • New youtube show• Seminar series on Legal System Reforms
Financing Infrastructure for the Future: Critical Challenges for Emerging Economies of the G20
Paying greater attention to the risks associated with large infrastructure projects is imperative whilst designing futuristic, climate-resilient infrastructure.
In her recent policy brief for the T20 engagement group under the G20 India presidency, Charmi Mehta presents a framework for assessing challenges in infrastructure financing. She highlights the need for better planning, sound procurement practices, and prioritisation of O&M of assets in improving conditions for financing large infrastructure projects.
Who is litigating cheque bounce cases?
Understanding the nature, size, and incentives of litigants is crucial for judicial reforms. Using the e-courts data, Siddarth Raman characterises and compares cheque dishonour cases in an urban region and a rural region.
He finds that, in the urban region, finance firms filed 53% of the cases, while individuals filed 82% of the cases, and finance firms filed only 12% of the cases in the rural region. In the urban region, cases filed by financial firms have a much higher likelihood of getting disposed of in 2-3 years compared to cases filed by individuals. No such pattern was visible for the rural region.
Helping litigants make informed choices in resolving debt disputes
A person involved in a legal dispute is faced with many questions - Should one sue or settle? How long till her case gets resolved through a court? When will the case come up for a hearing in court? How many times will she have to appear before a court?
In a recent article, Pavithra Manivannan, Susan Thomas, and Bhargavi Zaveri-Shah, deviate from the traditional approach of reporting aggregate figures on backlogs and sample mean for disposals about Indian courts. Instead, they use case-level data put up by the Bombay HC, NCLT, and DRT, and move towards a probability model to answer these questions, so as to assist litigants in debt recovery disputes.
Commentary
Procurement from MSMEs has been a policy priority for the Government of India. While setting preferential targets for such goals is a start, it must be accompanied by reforms to structural challenges that necessitated the preferential targets in the first place. In their article in BQ Prime, Charmi Mehta, and Diya Uday highlight tender strategies that can improve MSME participation in public contracts by illustrating the case of drone services procured under the SVAMITVA scheme.
In his Business Standard column, Ajay Shah discusses the monetary policy strategy of the US Fed and the RBI. The strong US economy and concerns about Ukraine's exports complicate the Fed's efforts in achieving its inflation target, leading to potential additional rate hikes. The interconnectedness of the global economy becomes evident as the Fed's tightening measures impact risky assets worldwide, while the conflict in Ukraine disrupts the global energy market. In India, the RBI's strategy of holding interest rates is on track, and the inflation targeting system has been effective in shaping RBI's actions. The article also highlights the implications of divergent monetary policies between the US and India.
Use of large language models across all sectors is rapidly increasing - what does this mean for businesses and how should we navigate this new landscape - ponders Ajay Shah in his article in the Business Standard. He discusses the possible pitfalls of overreliance on these models, how can they be used to reap productivity gains, and instances when their use must be treated with caution.
Media
Ajay Shah does a deep dive into Ukraine v. Russia in Episode 335 of The Seen And The Unseen with host, Amit Varma.
Ajay Shah and Amit Varma are co-hosting a new weekly show on youtube - Everything is Everything - which will contemplate the contemporary interesting questions of the age. Episode 1 is out.
Events
Roundtable on Empowering Litigants through Data on Courts
Once a case is filed in court, how many days does it take to get disposed of, how long will it take to get the first hearing, and what will be the cost involved? A litigant commonly relies on the experience of lawyers, friends, and relatives to answer these questions. However, with the proliferation of data published by courts, there are pathways to answer these questions in a more robust fashion. On 17th June, we hosted a roundtable on Empowering Litigants through Data on Courts, in Mumbai, to demonstrate some of these pathways. The event had participants from academic research institutions, law firms, civil society as well as entrepreneurs who are working on commercial applications in the law and justice space.
At the roundtable, we presented our work on a litigant-centric measurement system for courts, developed in collaboration with Agami as ecosystem partner. We demonstrated how such a system would work in the context of 3 courts in Mumbai - the Bombay High Court, the National Company Law Tribunal, and the Debt Recovery Tribunal. Ooloi Labs demonstrated a front-end tool that litigants could use to evaluate the performance of these courts. We explored the potential of applying the measurement framework and the tool to criminal courts.
The playlist of the talks and presentations made at the roundtable is here.
Seminar Series on Indian Legal Systems Reforms
We are hosting a monthly seminar series on Indian Legal Systems Reforms. The journey towards better legal systems in India requires deep research, careful thought, consultation and collaboration. There are many organizations working on different aspects of legal system reform in India, with varying perspectives, each one understanding one part of a complex puzzle.
We hosted the first of these series this month, with presentations from Ajay Shah on How to Modernise the Working of Court and Tribunals in India; Surya Prakash, Daksh on Single Source for Law; and Keerthana Medarametla, Agami on Next Gen Dispute Resolution - Removing Friction and Increasing Trust in New Ecosystems. The next one will be conducted on August 4th, 2023.
These seminars will be a platform for regular engagement across the community of changemakers interested in this field. Please write to raman.siddarth@gmail.com if interested to attend or participate.
We welcome your comments and suggestions on our work. Please write them to pavithra.manivannan4@gmail.com. To know more about our work and to collaborate with us visit xkdr.org.