Coming to the first, it is a well-accepted fact, even by members of the judiciary, that the integrity of the lower judiciary has indeed been compromised. Judges at lower courts are known to be prone of both bribery and intimidation. Does this rot reach the higher levels? While there have been cases of corruption in the higher judiciary, I would like to continue to believe that the judiciary High Court onwards is rather unbiased and honest. That said, how many of India's cases are actually heard in High Courts? Do we want to clog our high courts so that everybody gets justice? Well, if we are to make our judicial system work, we need to clear the clutter at the bottom.
This has been adequately represented in movies, Aakrosh being the latest one that I happened to watch. There is a perception, and correct to a great extent, that the role of the investigating agency / police has started to extend into courtrooms. This is a rather worrisome trend, since this means that the judicial process will always be inclined in favour of the prosecuting agency, and hence likely to be a biased process.
There is hence a need to restore the integrity of this third pillar of our democracy, and we need to not look down upon EU sending observers to our trials as interference. As a responsible international power, we need to be transparent, even with regard to what we might perceive as an 'internal matter', but what the world perceives as something of import.
