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India needs more lawyers than engineers who can provide constructive solutions to the on-going problems and lead the society to progress and change.

As per the recent reports released by various international organizations, India’s laggard social development has been outpaced by her neighbours like Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Maldives and Bangladesh. These reports surprisingly were released in the same year when the former Chief Justice of India (CJI) T.S. Thakur broke down at a meeting in the presence of the Prime Minister owing to the shortage of lawyers in india , lamenting the government’s inaction for increasing the number of judges and said, "You cannot shift the entire burden on the judiciary". Judiciary is pivotal for a nation’s development and lawyers are the guardians of democracy. India has achieved prominent success in the development of its economy but now it is high time that it shifts its focus to the development of its social capital.

At the 37th BhimsenSachar Memorial Lecture on Independent Judiciary: Bastian of Democracy, former CJI Thakur remarked, “You can’t talk of democracy if you don’t have an independent judiciary.” The Indian judiciary has a backlog of 2.8 crore pending civil and criminal cases between July 2015 and June 2016. A major reason for this whooping number of unsolved litigation is a shortage of judges. The Supreme Court released two reports last year which underscores the need for around 15000 more judges to normalize the situation and ease the current burden on the judiciary. Uttar Pradesh has the highest number of pending cases followed by West Bengal, Bihar and Gujarat. “Justice is one critical component of citizenship which cannot be neglected. Overworked judges, overburdened court staff, a chronic shortage of court space, shortage of lawyers and unending wait to justice does not complement the policies of the State,” said the reports.

Earlier this year, the Bar Council of India started a verification drive to identify the number of genuine and fake lawyers practicing in courts. Much to the dismay of the already burdened system, about 30-40 percent of the practicing lawyers are bogus. This move will certainly improve the quality of the profession but it has also created a need for more number of lawyers in India. Lawyers are an alternative solution to the over-burdened courts of the country and can provide them respite by helping the plaintiff and defendant get legal advice and settle the issue out of court and they are future of legal profession in india. Settling issues out of court is not only less time consuming but also less expensive as compared to fighting the case in court. It cuts down the fee to be paid to the attorney, court, witnesses etc and saves one from the unending trial dates. It also gives the involved parties more power to influence the outcome, as here they participate more actively. Even Abraham Lincoln urged, “Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbours to compromise whenever you can. As a peacemaker, the lawyer has a superior opportunity of being a good man. There will still be business enough.”

Democracy is rooted in law and lawyers are people learned in that discipline. They dominate in a democracy because the domains of politics and law are strongly intertwined; the former requires effective legislation and the latter is learned in that. America is a leading example where more than half of its senators have practiced law. Its former President Barack Obama himself was a Harvard Law graduate and his cabinet consisted of a good deal of former lawyers. China, on the other hand, was governed by a group of engineers. Former President Hu Jintao who was a hydraulic engineer himself had a cabinet consisting of many engineers. These differing patterns can be seen as a result of different visions and ideologies of both the countries. Engineers build and create, and China’s focus during Jintao’s regime was infrastructural development. Lawyers, on the other hand, are promoters and guardians of individual rights; legalization of LGBTQ marriages by Obama government can be seen as a result of that.

World Bank has predicted that India will become the fastest growing economy in the world if it manages to maintain its annual growth rate at 7 percent. However, one shouldn’t be deceived by this foretold success. Economic development does not ensure an overall development of the country. According to a report published by Business and Sustainable Development Commission (2017), 53 percent of India’s wealth is owned by only 1 percent of Indians. Development in its true sense encompasses economic growth along with social and political progress. India is the financially dominant power in the Indian sub-continent but is a laggard in terms of social development. It is ranked 143rd out of 180 countries by Global Burden of Disease report (2015), 97 out of 118 countries in Global Hunger Index (2016) and 98 out of 148 countries in Global Social Index (2016). In Human Development Index (2015), India was ranked 130 and falls below South Asian countries like Iran, Maldives and Sri Lanka.

India has made tremendous success in the development of economy and the Information and Communication sector. It outsources the most number of engineers. In fact, India has more engineering colleges than law colleges causing shortage of lawyers in india. The mass production of engineers has contributed to the rising unemployment or disguised unemployment among the educated, as they are forced to take up jobs outside their field. The best in the field are outsourced. Outsourcing undoubtedly enhances the country’s GDP but also degrades the quality of human capital.

Improvement of social capital requires the inclusion of more people in the field of social science and more number of lawyers in india. Lawyers are social scientists who can help in the development of the society and are future of legal profession in india. They have historically played leading roles in bringing a much-needed change to the society. Most of the Nationalist leaders of the freedom struggle were lawyers. Advocate and environmentalist M.C.Mehta is an epitome of how valuable lawyers are to the nation. Often known as ‘One Man Enviro-legal Brigade’ he has won several landmark cases, one of them being the banning of polluting Industries in the vicinity of Taj Mahal in the year 1996. His unending efforts led the inclusion of ‘Right to a healthy environment’ as a part of Right to Life (Article 21) guaranteed by the constitution.