Reforming India’s broken criminal justice system | Opinion

India’s politicians seem to prefer a system they can manipulate. But if there is a will to reform, here is a way. Why does social policy need objective indicators? Why measure failures and successes of policies or institutions like the police or the courts? Well, what is measured has a better chance of getting done. This debate was recently revived after the Nobel Prize was conferred on economists Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer for their evidence-based trials for poverty mitigation.

The trio has been successful in translating field-based evidence into actionable public policy insights. But what if optimum data-based indicators fail to influence policy? Clearly, objective data is essential but data per se does not automatically lead to improved policies. That is precisely what is happening to a mountain of data we have collected about India’s criminal justice system.