Chief Justice of India Surya Kant on Saturday said sustained economic growth cannot depend solely on geographical advantages, stressing the need for “Nyaya-nomics” or the economics of justice to create a level playing field through consistent adjudication.
Addressing the 11th BRICS+ Legal Forum in New Delhi, the Chief Justice of India (CJI) said institutions are not scaffolding erected around growth, but they are its architecture.
The theme of the forum was 'Rule of Law Frameworks and Institutional Capacity Building for Economic Resilience, Innovation and Sustainability'.
The scale at which the country is progressing, and this holds true for each of the BRICS+ nations, owes itself to the nature of institutions, the judiciary being chief among them, he said.
"The enormous growth that our nations are expected to sustain cannot solely arrive by the luck of geography or the accident of resources. It is built, deliberately, out of institutions strong enough to be trusted. Perhaps numbers and statistics can make the point better than words alone," CJI Kant said.
"Nyaya-nomics, or more simply, the economics of justice. It is a fact that consistent adjudication and trust in the process reduce the cost of each transaction built upon it, thereby levelling the playing field for market forces, and in turn, making way for growth," he said.
No BRICS+ economy, including India, has achieved growth solely through its resources. Development in these countries has been proportional to the enforceability of their commitments, he added.
Further, the CJI said, "If there is one phrase you absorb into your vocabulary this morning, let it be 'Nyaya Setu', a bridge of justice that connects 11 legal traditions which have mutually agreed that trust should be cultivated deliberately rather than awaited passively."
"Institutions are not scaffolding we erect around growth once it has already begun, but they are its architecture. Take the architecture away, and in truth, what looks like a rising economy is a stack of good fortune waiting for its first storm," he said.
(With inputs from PTI)