Agamiscape: Insights from Agami Prize 2022
Exploring Innovative and Collaborative Approaches that Redefine Justice Delivery
As children, when we wanted to play, we would knock on our neighbours’ doors to call them out to play— learning, fighting, and creating games together. However, as we grow up, we end up forgetting about the joys of play and improvisation.
The pandemic had served as a wake-up call, revealing the failures of our existing systems, including the justice system. We realized the need to actively play, participate and elevate our efforts. To shape a justice system that serves everyone, we realised the need to form a team of like-minded individuals who are ready to play, fight, and innovate together. But how do we find such peers who can challenge us and themselves; and attract more people to join? The Agami Prize and Agami Summit seeks to find just that.
Through our extensive Prize Process discovered fourteen remarkable initiatives out of 648. This process offered us the opportunity to connect with potential teammates and gain valuable insights. We hope these connections and insights enable you to navigate the field of justicemaking and make significant progress in the ideas you are passionate about.
Rethinking Justice - The Deeper QuestionsÂ
We as a society have been in this business of ‘delivering’ justice for so long that, for the most part, we invest our energies in advancing ‘how’ it must be delivered - to become more accessible, inclusive or efficient. Few of us step back to ask the deeper questions: what is the point of the justice system itself? What is its goal? Are some of the ideas, beliefs and assumptions behind those goals sound?Â
We are seeing a new breed of justicemakers asking just these questions. For instance, Enfold and Counsel to Secure Justice are challenging the assumption that punitive action against a harm-doer serves justice for anyone: the victim, offender or society. Instead, they are exploring what justice processes would look like if the goal of justice delivery evolved to restore and heal all the actors involved. Similarly, One Future Collective is challenging the assumption of a uniform idea of what justice looks like for all victims. They seek to serve ‘contextualised justice’, which offers a choice to a victim to choose her pathway to healing and secure justice - whether that means mental health counselling, healing circles or a lawyer. This new breed of justicemakers— most of whom are women— are learning and investing in themselves and a community of practice to develop fundamentally new capabilities and craft than what is taught in law schools.Â
Jawabdehi Andolan is also bringing a different and critical dimension of justice delivery that is currently missing in our justice system. All laws and processes are either designed for (a) the state to hold citizens accountable for their actions or (b) for citizens to pursue institutional structures to secure rights and ensure the delivery of justice. Jawabdehi Andolan asks— What is the framework to ensure the state’s accountability? They have pioneered a set of principles (aka the ‘Bhilwara Principles’) that include advocating for institutionalised processes to create a level playing dialogue between the state and citizens (through the Jansunwai mechanism). They have also been advocating for an Accountability Law in the State of Rajasthan that places the site of accountability with public functionaries and establishes a structured grievance redressal mechanism. The Rajasthan State Government has recently published this Bill for public comment.Â
Though these practices and ideas are at an early stage, they hold a lot of promise. As disputes and conflicts grow exponentially in a fast-changing society, we need to invest in radically different models that compassionately serve our communities. Through them, we can learn and evolve even better approaches.Â
Developing the New Social Change InfrastructureÂ
There is a new class of solutions that recognises that the Access to Justice challenge in the country cannot be solved by one product or service alone, however transformative it may be. They seek to enable many solutions and changemakers, at every level, however big or small, to make a dent in the problem by serving as a societal infrastructure that empowers local changemakers. Often these solutions are a potent combination of technology and special networks of human change agents with the relevant knowledge and tools that can easily enable a variety of problems to be solved by those that understand them best. Â
Aadiwasi Janjagruti is a network of mobile-savvy adivasi youth that are using their smartphones to make videos and build or support a wide range of local issues that are brought to them; Haqdarshak is using technology and enabling a cadre of women haqdarshaks to ensure last-mile delivery of services. Nyaaya, which developed a specialisation in legal literacy content, has built a network that includes local organisations, regional experts and law school clinics to create a system response to local legal needs. Through its IVR technology and ‘local media clubs’ run by volunteers, Mobile Vaani is supporting not just one use case but a wide variety of social use cases, from people mobilising around the failure to develop a local government school to developing an organic campaign for better implementation of MNREGA in the district.
Whether or not these social change infrastructure providers, or societal platforms, as they are also known, include digital public goods, i.e. technology that others can openly and freely use to build or adapt their tools, there is also the concurrent growth of digital public goods such as the Beckn Protocol (a set of open protocols to create open and decentralised digital ecosystems) and Bhashini (a National Public Digital Platform for languages) that could supercharge these societal infrastructures.Â
More such societal infrastructure solutions that are user-centric, interoperable with each other, and contextualised will enable millions of people to participate in the goal of access to justice. When a critical mass of such architecture becomes available in a region, people’s likelihood of solving their problems increases exponentially. This adaptive and scalable societal infrastructure could serve as a vital complement to government institutions or even large civil society organisations.
In-House Driving Innovation in Legal IndustryÂ
Until recently, the in-house legal function was primarily seen as a conservative secretarial function. It served an important role but was not seen as a centre for legal innovation or business strategy. Even as recently as pre-COVID, there was a widespread presumption that law firms or practitioners would drive most legal innovation. The actual experience has turned this on its head.Â
Enterprise legal has been the biggest driver of legal innovation, innovating its role inside companies in the process. Most Indian legal-tech solutions reached the growth stage because of their adoption by enterprises.Â
In debt management, adoption by the financial services enterprises has powered the rise of Credgenics; in Online Dispute Resolution (ODR), the buy-in of leading banks has led to the early success of SAMA, CORD, and Presolv360; in property management, the support of leading housing finance companies has nurtured TEAL, in digital document workflows, enterprises digitising their onboarding and customer management have driven the growth of Leegality and SignDesk; and in case management, the adoption of enterprises with large litigation portfolios has supported Provakil, Legistify and Flywork. The spending of legal departments has also increased exponentially. Legal professionals who could easily find a place in top law firms, in India or abroad, have chosen to head up legal departments, steadily transforming the pay and status of the role of the General Counsel. General Counsels of leading companies are also actively engaged in making their departments centres of innovation and supporting innovation in the broader legal ecosystem. Â
Breakthrough Legal Products Addressing Business Needs at Scale
The onset of contemporary legal tech in 2017-2018 was about improving legal function with business innovation. ODR was about taking mediation or arbitration online; legal research was about finding precedents easier; contract tools focused on drafting; and legal marketplaces focused on discovering lawyers. The large-scale opportunities to unblock and accelerate business could not be seen due to a disconnect between the innovators and those with the best grasp of the problem. In the last two years, a new generation of providers has emerged who are improving business functions with scalable legal solutions. They have identified fast-moving, high-volume use cases that help businesses of all types operate more effectively.Â
For instance, Lawyered has developed an end-to-end legal support solution for truckers taking a fee from logistics networks; Credgenics helps financial services companies minimise credit defaults by engaging borrowers and even providing mediation solutions if needed; CrimeCheck offers vital information about people’s criminal histories to enterprises seeking to lend to them, hire them etc.; and TEAL is equipping housing finance companies to quantify risk around property titles better.
These providers have also realised that most users require solutions for their entire theatre of work instead of a fix for a single step. So, legal professionals don’t just need better search but drafting support, practice management, lead generation and more. Enterprises with a high volume of contracts need assembly, review, management and analytics. Those with large litigation portfolios need case management, legal professional discovery and workflow management, case research and analysis, and litigation support. In short, clients want to be able to do many things within the same product environment or across highly interoperable product environments.Â
We are seeing the rise in such solutions where SignDesk has developed end-to-end document workflow solutions that address document assembly, review, registration, stamping and signing. Legistify enables enterprises to manage their cases and contract professional ecosystems end-to-end. Provakil has developed full-scale practice and case management solutions.Â
There remains some space for critical-step solutions to work seamlessly across different systems and stakeholders, as has been shown by Leegality. Leegality has developed an industry-leading signing solution that works with multiple other document ecosystems allowing it to begin its product development journey across different domains. Â
Creative resourcing for rights-based initiatives
Changes in legal regulation, shrinking foreign funding and shifting strategies of philanthropies have all adversely affected the landscape of funding for rights-based initiatives in India. The repercussions of COVID-19 added new complexity to the field. In this challenging context, we see justicemakers creatively staff and resource their efforts.
Aadiwasi Janjagaruti, an initiative based in Dhadgaon, Maharashtra (mentioned earlier), has kept its costs and overheads low by engaging with youth volunteers and met the incentives needed for their community and their small overhead costs by crowdfunding small amounts from the villagers (INR 15-20 per head), ad earnings on their YouTube channel (between INR 2000-5000) etc. A team member recently contested in the Panchayat elections and won to become the sarpanch with funding of just INR 50,000. Similarly, MAKAAM (Mahila Kisan Adhikaar Manch), a nationwide unregistered collective of 100+ organisations and individuals doing very powerful work to secure the rights of women farmers in India, has only one program manager, whose salary is supported by funding crowdsourced from the community. All their other members are volunteers. Global Care Foundation, based in Mumbai, meets some of their funding needs for their work in prisons, by crowdfunding, particularly during festivals, leveraging the Zakat principle in Islam that particularly encourages contributions towards releasing prisoners or those in bondage.Â
While more systemic efforts need to be made as a sector to unlock needed capital, these strategies exhibit not only the creativity of resource efforts but also a means to enhance community ownership over the initiatives. Â
Innovation in Dispute Resolution Pathways Gains Momentum
The ecosystem to provide citizens with different pathways to resolve their grievances and disputes is growing.Â
Online Dispute Resolution (ODR) in India has deepened its penetration and has reached a tipping point. It has extended its application to Online Lok Adalats, Motor Vehicles Tribunals, Tax Offices, Customs Offices, and many more state fora. This is over and above the private ODR services now widely used by banks, NBFCs, e-commerce companies, and more. New digital ecosystems, such as Account Aggregators in finance, payments, and the Open Network for Digital Commerce in e-commerce, have native ODR solutions to which users can take recourse, picking their choice of providers. It’s not just the ‘hearings’ aspect that has been digitised in these cases but often a complete process transformation, including dispute awareness, filings, decisions and appeals.Â
Community-based solutions such as Aajeevika Bureau, Nari Adalats, Neev Shiksha Jankalyan Samiti leverage collective dialogue and mediation for addressing individual grievances and disputes, and initiatives such as Jawabdehi Andolan are ensuring societal infrastructure for collective grievances, state accountability, and other development agendas.Â
Digitisation has also penetrated the consumer grievances space, birthing hybrid solutions such as Jagrook Upbhogta Manch, which uses a range of online tools to pursue consumer grievances and Voxya, which uses new-age communication tools and strategies to get customers the best resolutions of their complaints. Credgenics and Insurance Samadhan are intervening at the dispute prevention stage, using necessary behavioural nudges and processes to minimise financial defaults and insurance frauds. Â
Courts have been making steady progress in improving the experience of lawyers and citizens. Several courts have enabled hybrid hearings, and many are now live-streaming critical hearings. The judiciary in Orissa has introduced Remote Witness Deposition Centres that allow experts such as medical officers/ police to depose their testimonies from the court nearest to them instead of travelling hundreds of kilometres.Â
This diversity of transformation across the entire spectrum of dispute resolution, in combination with the imminent AI revolution, will change the landscape of grievances and resolutions as we know it.Â
The Loud Chorus: The Need for New Capacities and Skills Â
The justice system needs transformation— like a caterpillar turning into a butterfly. And our capacity to achieve such transformation will be directly proportional to our embracing a whole new set of capacities and skills.Â
Skills and capacities that enable us to go from passive understanding and following of precedent to imagining and creating new possibilities; to challenge the assumptions and beliefs on which our current justice system is built and imagine a new future that works for all of us; to go from being risk averse to risk-taking; and to go from being steeped in firefighting individual cases, to building our capacity to sense the larger system and act accordingly. Skills such as dialogue, mediation, and entrepreneurship, in conjunction with the capacities of empathy, creativity, self-awareness and leadership.Â
The innovation trends show us that the new ideas around collaboration resolution, creative dialogue, restorative justice and justice leadership require as many citizens to learn these skills, but our current education system, including in higher education in social sciences, liberal arts and law, does not focus on these skills and capacities. As Otto Scharmer says, we need to create Universities (in whatever shape and form) that go beyond filling the ‘knowledge gap’. We need Universities that act as a platform to bridge the ‘knowing-being-doing gap’. That equips us to transform ourselves and our society by upgrading our mental and social operating systems: our awareness of ourselves and our ecosystem, our capacity to listen, empathise, and access curiosity, our capacity to courageously collaborate, lead, problem-solve and let go.Â
We need to go from a few thousand justicemakers in society to millions representing the length and breadth of the country. If we cannot develop these much-needed skills and capacities, all we will have is a faster, more efficient caterpillar of a justice system rather than a butterfly.
