Introduction
The appeal of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) is, in many ways, self-explanatory. Courts take years; ADR promises something faster, cheaper and less brutalising. To anyone who has watched a court hand out dates stretching months into the future, that appeal is not abstract but immediate. Five crore pending cases is not merely a statistic. Behind it are litigants whose mental health, finances and entire lives are suspended in uncertainty, sometimes for decades.
In practice, however, ADR remains largely confined to those who already know it exists and can afford to use it. Awareness remains low. In matrimonial disputes, where ADR could genuinely spare families years of painful litigation, parties still default to the longer, harder route, often because no one has told them that there is another way. The system has real merits, but the gap between what it promises and whom it actually reaches is where this paper begins.
India’s courts face a staggering backlog. As of 2024, over five crore cases remained pending across the various levels of the judiciary.1 Against this backdrop, ADR has been enthusiastically promoted as a pressure valve: a way to decongest courts while simultaneously bringing justice closer to ordinary people. The Legal Services Authorities Act, 1987 institutionalised Lok Adalats as a mechanism for pre-litigation and court-referred settlements.2 The Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996, as amended in 2015 and 2019, sought to make arbitration faster and more enforceable.3 Cumulatively, these developments present ADR as an evolving, responsive system.
Yet a critical question remains underexplored: accessible to whom? Speed and volume of disposal, the metrics most commonly used to evaluate ADR, say very little about whether justice was actually delivered, and to whom. A Lok Adalat that settles ten thousand cases in a single day is not necessarily a just institution if those settlements were reached under time pressure, without informed consent, and at the cost of the weaker party’s legitimate claims. A mediation centre that resolves matrimonial disputes efficiently is not necessarily equitable if it systematically disadvantages women whose bargaining position is already compromised. An online dispute resolution (ODR) platform is not truly inclusive if it remains inaccessible to those without reliable internet or English language fluency.
This paper examines four structural sites where India’s ADR framework falls short of its equity promise: Lok Adalats, matrimonial mediation, ODR, and informal dispute resolution bodies. The methodology is doctrinal and socio-legal, drawing on statutory provisions, NALSA reports, Supreme Court decisions, and secondary data on ADR disposal rates. The central argument is simple: efficiency alone is not enough. An equity-centred framework is long overdue.
Lok Adalats and the problem of coerced settlements
Lok Adalats, established under Chapter VI of the Legal Services Authorities Act, 1987, represent one of India’s most ambitious experiments in mass dispute resolution. Statistically, their record is remarkable: NALSA data reported to Parliament show that crores of cases have been settled through Lok Adalats,4 with single-day National Lok Adalats disposing of lakhs of matters across the country. But behind these numbers sits a question that is easy to overlook: what happens when someone signs a settlement they did not truly want to sign? In the courts, a dissatisfied party can appeal. That option does not exist here. Under Section 21 of the Legal Services Authorities Act, every award of a Lok Adalat is final and binding, and no appeal lies against it to any court;5 once an award is recorded, it can be challenged only by a writ petition under Article 226 or 227 of the Constitution, and then only on very limited grounds.6 For a litigant who felt pressured, lacked legal literacy, or simply did not fully understand what they were agreeing to, that finality is not a feature. It is a trap.
The Supreme Court in State of Punjab v. Jalour Singh cautioned that a Lok Adalat award must rest on a genuine compromise or settlement between the parties, and that a Lok Adalat may not impose its own view of what is just on parties who have not agreed.7 However, the practical reality (large volumes of cases processed in single sittings, limited deliberation time, and significant institutional pressure to maximise disposal numbers) makes meaningful consent structurally difficult. A litigant who has waited years for resolution, lacks legal literacy, and cannot afford to return to court is not negotiating from a position of genuine freedom.
Furthermore, the metric of success most commonly applied to Lok Adalats, the number of cases disposed of, incentivises volume over quality. When disposal rates become the primary benchmark, the question of whether each settlement was substantively fair risks being subordinated to the goal of clearing the docket. For litigants with legal knowledge and bargaining power, this may matter little. For those without, the consequences can be significant and irreversible.
The concern about coerced settlements is not merely theoretical. The Supreme Court itself has observed that many sitting or retired judges, while participating in Lok Adalats, “tend to conduct Lok Adalats like courts, by hearing parties, and imposing their views as to what is just and equitable, on the parties”.8 The institutional atmosphere, presided over by sitting or retired judges, conducted in courthouse premises and framed in the language of finality, carries an implicit authority that many litigants are ill-equipped to resist. This is not coercion in any crude or deliberate sense; it is structural coercion produced by an asymmetry of information, power and institutional confidence. The litigant who has never appeared before a judicial body, who does not understand the legal consequences of signing the settlement form, and who has been told that this is their best opportunity for resolution, is not a free agent at the negotiating table. Such litigants are captives of circumstances that the system has not been designed to address.
There is also a notable class dimension to this problem. Litigants who are represented by counsel, even informally, are better placed in Lok Adalat proceedings, because counsel can assess whether a proposed settlement reflects the legal merits of the claim. Unrepresented litigants, by contrast, have no such anchor. NALSA’s own mandate includes providing legal representation to eligible persons, yet in the context of large-scale Lok Adalat camps, individual legal assistance for every unrepresented party is rarely achievable. The gap between NALSA’s mandate and operational reality is one that reform must squarely confront.
The Permanent Lok Adalat mechanism under Chapter VI-A of the Legal Services Authorities Act, introduced for public utility services, offers a partial model: where the parties fail to reach agreement, the Permanent Lok Adalat itself decides the dispute,9 providing a degree of procedural protection absent from conventional Lok Adalats. Extending analogous safeguards to mainstream Lok Adalat proceedings, particularly a mandatory cooling-off period before a settlement is finalised, would be a meaningful and administratively feasible reform.
What is required is a structural rethinking of how Lok Adalat success is measured. Disposal numbers must be supplemented by qualitative indicators: whether parties had access to independent legal advice before settlement, whether adequate time was provided for deliberation, and whether the settlement reflected genuinely informed and voluntary consent. Without such safeguards, Lok Adalats risk becoming institutions that are fast for everyone but fair for only some.
The need for reform is urgent. NALSA must introduce mandatory pre-settlement checklists ensuring that parties understand the finality of Lok Adalat awards before signing. Without institutional accountability for the quality of consent, the promise of access to justice through Lok Adalats will remain hollow for India’s most vulnerable litigants.
Mediation in matrimonial disputes and gender power imbalance
Mediation in matrimonial disputes is often presented as a gentler, more humane alternative to adversarial litigation. In principle, that is true. In practice, however, a mediation table is only as neutral as the society in which it operates, and the social setting of matrimonial disputes in India is not neutral when it comes to women. In a patriarchal context, many women in matrimonial disputes do not walk into mediation as equal parties. They walk in already disadvantaged: economically dependent, socially pressured, and often conditioned to believe that their voice carries less weight than their husband’s. Procedural neutrality on paper means very little when the power imbalance in the room is this fundamental. The Supreme Court’s directions in K. Srinivas Rao v. D.A. Deepa,10 building on the duty that the Family Courts Act, 1984 places on Family Courts to endeavour to bring about a settlement,11 direct courts to refer matrimonial matters to mediation at the earliest stage, with the consent of the parties: a well-intentioned push toward faster resolution. But faster is not the same as fairer.
The fundamental problem with mediation in matrimonial disputes is that it presupposes a level of bargaining parity between the parties that frequently does not exist. In a social context where women often face economic dependence, limited mobility, social stigma associated with separation or divorce, and family pressure to preserve the marriage, the mediation table is rarely a neutral space. A woman who is financially dependent on her husband, lacks independent housing, or fears social ostracism if the marriage dissolves is not negotiating freely; she is negotiating from a position of structural disadvantage.
The consequences of this imbalance are significant. Women may accept settlements that undervalue their contributions to the marriage, agree to inadequate maintenance, or relinquish claims over matrimonial property simply to reach a resolution that allows them to move forward. The mediator’s role, if not carefully calibrated, can inadvertently reinforce these dynamics by prioritising settlement over substantive fairness or by applying cultural assumptions about the desirability of preserving the marriage. Mediator training in India, moreover, remains inconsistent, with no uniform standard that requires sensitivity to gender power dynamics.
The Mediation Act, 2023,12 while significant, does not adequately address the specific vulnerabilities of women in matrimonial disputes.
An equity-centred approach to matrimonial mediation must therefore go beyond procedural neutrality. It must require mediators to be trained in gender sensitivity, ensure independent legal advice for vulnerable parties, and build safeguards against settlements reached under duress.
Gender-just mediation is not merely a procedural aspiration; it is a constitutional necessity. When mediation systematically produces outcomes that disadvantage women, it ceases to be an alternative to injustice and becomes an instrument of it. Reform must therefore be urgent, structural, and explicitly grounded in the constitutional guarantees of equality and non-discrimination under Articles 14 and 15.
It is also worth examining the institutional context in which matrimonial mediation referrals are made. Family courts and district courts routinely refer parties to mediation as a matter of procedure, often early in proceedings and without individual assessment of whether the power dynamics between the parties make mediation appropriate. The referral itself can function as a form of pressure, particularly for women who are already navigating the social and emotional costs of litigation. When a court refers a matter to mediation and the woman knows that her refusal to participate may be viewed unfavourably, the voluntariness of the process is compromised from the outset. In Afcons Infrastructure Ltd. v. Cherian Varkey Construction Co. (P) Ltd., the Supreme Court identified categories of cases normally unsuitable for ADR, among them cases involving serious and specific allegations of coercion, while listing matrimonial causes, maintenance and child custody among those normally suitable and leaving exceptions to the referring court.13 Yet no systematic screening mechanism exists in matrimonial matters to identify cases where power imbalances make mediation inappropriate or harmful.
The role of the mediator in such settings is therefore not merely facilitative: it is potentially protective or potentially harmful, depending on the mediator’s awareness of gender dynamics. Mediators who are trained primarily in interest-based negotiation techniques, without a working understanding of how domestic economic dependence, social pressure and the threat of stigma shape a woman’s stated preferences, are not equipped to ensure fair outcomes. Comparative practice points to a different approach. In Australia, an accredited family dispute resolution practitioner must determine, before conducting sessions, whether the ability of a party to negotiate freely is affected by family violence, safety concerns or the equality of bargaining power between the parties, and may proceed only if dispute resolution is found to be appropriate.14 India’s mediation policy has not meaningfully engaged with such comparative models.
Online dispute resolution and the digital divide
Online Dispute Resolution is, on paper, the most exciting development in access to justice in recent years. A dispute can be resolved from a phone, without a lawyer, without a courtroom, and without taking a day off work. The promise is real. But it rests on one assumption that breaks down almost immediately outside urban India: that people have the internet, a smartphone, and the money to afford both. For a significant portion of India’s population, none of those three things can be taken for granted. ODR designed without acknowledging that reality is not a solution to the access to justice problem; it is a solution for people who never really had that problem to begin with.
The NITI Aayog’s 2021 report explicitly positioned ODR as a tool for democratising access to justice, especially in the post-pandemic landscape.15 However, the assumption that digital access is evenly distributed is empirically unsustainable. According to TRAI data, India’s internet subscriber base has grown significantly, yet at the end of March 2024 there were 111.75 internet subscribers per hundred people in urban areas against 44.16 in rural areas.16 Meaningful digital access, in the sense of reliable connectivity, functional devices and sufficient digital literacy to navigate online platforms, remains concentrated in urban areas and among more affluent populations. Rural and semi-urban India is systematically underserved. The language barrier compounds this further: many ODR platforms operate primarily in English, a language in which a large majority of India’s population is not fluent. For a litigant in rural Uttar Pradesh or interior Maharashtra, navigating an ODR interface, understanding the terms of a proposed settlement or effectively presenting a grievance in English is not merely inconvenient; it is practically impossible. Justice that requires English fluency is not universal justice. The Supreme Court in Anita Kushwaha v. Pushap Sudan held that access to justice is a facet of the right to life guaranteed by Article 21, and may equally be a facet of the guarantee of equality under Article 14.17 That right can hardly be exercised meaningfully without access to dispute resolution in one’s own language.
Vernacular interfaces, offline alternatives, and digital literacy programmes must be treated as core design requirements rather than supplementary features.
The digital divide is not merely a technological problem; it is a justice problem. Until ODR platforms are designed with India’s linguistic and infrastructural diversity as their starting point rather than an afterthought, they will continue to serve as access to justice mechanisms for the few rather than the many.
The equity deficit in ODR is also compounded by the design assumptions embedded in most platforms. ODR systems are largely architected around a model user who has a smartphone, stable broadband connectivity, familiarity with digital interfaces, and the ability to upload documents, respond to notices within set timeframes, and participate in video-based hearings. This model user does not represent the majority of India’s disputant population. The NITI Aayog’s 2021 report on ODR acknowledged this gap, but framed it as a transitional challenge to be resolved as digital infrastructure and literacy expand.18 This framing is inadequate. Infrastructure expansion is a decade-long project at minimum; the access to justice crisis is immediate. Designing ODR for a future India while deploying it in the present one means that the populations who need dispute resolution most urgently are the very populations for whom ODR works least well.
Moreover, the concentration of ODR platforms in consumer and financial disputes, areas that naturally attract urban, digitally literate users, creates a self-reinforcing dynamic. Data generated by these platforms reflect the experiences of their actual users rather than the broader disputant population, making it difficult to identify and address the exclusions built into platform design. Regulators have begun to build ODR into grievance redress: the RBI has required authorised payment system operators to provide ODR systems for disputes over failed transactions,19 and SEBI routes securities-market grievances that the market participant has not resolved to a common online dispute resolution portal.20 Without simultaneously mandating vernacular access, offline alternatives and assisted-use infrastructure, such mandates risk converting a digital preference into a digital requirement, and imposing that requirement disproportionately on those least able to meet it.
The e-Lok Adalats held since 2020 point toward a model for bridging this gap. The first, organised by the Chhattisgarh High Court and State Legal Services Authority in July 2020, settled 2,270 cases in a single day by video conferencing, and the format has since been taken up in other States.21 The NITI Aayog committee itself recommended kiosks in rural areas with trained paralegal volunteers to assist users, and the use of Common Service Centres to connect local populations to ODR services.22 Where disputants cannot independently access digital platforms, assisted access through Common Service Centres and district legal services authorities can extend ODR’s reach without abandoning its efficiency advantages. Scaling such hybrid models must be a policy priority, not an experimental footnote.
Informal dispute resolution and caste hierarchy
Gram sabhas, caste panchayats and village councils are held up as convenient and familiar forums for dispute resolution, accessible to people in a way that courts are not. But accessibility without accountability is not justice. Caste panchayats have issued diktats on the choice of one’s life partner,23 as well as on women’s attire and mobility, imposing moral codes not sanctioned by any law. The victims are frequently the most vulnerable: Dalit litigants and women who are already marginalised by the very hierarchies these bodies embody. A constitutional democracy cannot stand idle in the face of such an affront to its democratic ethos. While the Protection of Civil Rights Act, 195524 and the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 198925 provide legislative safeguards, their application to informal dispute resolution remains inconsistent.
The problem is structural: when informal bodies derive their authority from a community consensus shaped by caste hierarchy, their outcomes tend to reflect those hierarchies. No amount of goodwill on the part of individual panchayat members can substitute for structural safeguards. Bringing informal dispute resolution within constitutional accountability through minimum procedural standards and oversight mechanisms is essential.
Constitutional democracy cannot coexist with dispute resolution forums that reproduce caste hierarchy. The legitimacy of any dispute resolution mechanism must ultimately be judged not by its cultural familiarity but by its fidelity to the constitutional values of equality, dignity and non-discrimination.
The gendered dimensions of informal dispute resolution deserve particular attention alongside its caste dimensions, since the two frequently intersect in ways that compound disadvantage. Caste panchayats have in documented instances issued directives concerning women’s dress, mobility and marriage choices that have no legal authority but carry significant coercive force within communities. Women from Dalit or marginalised caste backgrounds who bring disputes before such bodies face a compounded vulnerability: not only is the forum often structurally biased against their caste position, but their gender further diminishes their standing. In such contexts, the concept of dispute resolution as a rights-affirming exercise becomes entirely disconnected from practice.
Importantly, the problem of informal dispute resolution is not solved simply by condemning traditional forums and directing parties to formal courts. For many communities, particularly those in geographically remote areas or those for whom formal litigation is financially prohibitive, informal bodies remain the only practically accessible option. The solution cannot be a binary choice between flawed informal forums and inaccessible formal courts. What is needed is a layered framework: one that preserves community-based dispute resolution where it functions equitably, subjects it to minimum constitutional standards of fairness and non-discrimination, and provides accessible formal recourse where those standards are not met. Legal Services Authorities at the district level are best positioned to play an oversight and grievance redressal role in relation to informal dispute resolution, a function that has not yet been systematically operationalised.
Recommendations and conclusions
India’s ADR framework, while impressive in scale, is structured in ways that systematically disadvantage those who need justice most. Equity must become a foundational design principle.
Four concrete reforms are proposed. First, Lok Adalat evaluation must incorporate qualitative consent indicators. The Legal Services Authorities Act should be amended to require that parties be informed of their right to independent legal advice before any settlement is recorded, and to create a limited right of review where a settlement is alleged to have been reached under coercion. Second, matrimonial mediation must require mandatory gender-sensitisation training and independent legal advice for vulnerable parties; the Mediation Act, 2023 should be supplemented by rules requiring access to independent legal advice for economically vulnerable parties in matrimonial mediation. Third, ODR platforms must offer vernacular interfaces and offline alternatives as core requirements, and digital literacy programmes targeting rural and semi-urban populations must be treated as an integral component of ODR policy rather than an afterthought. Fourth, informal dispute resolution bodies must be brought within constitutional accountability through minimum procedural standards and appeal rights.
Speed without equity is not justice: it is the appearance of justice for those who can navigate the system, and its denial for those who cannot. India’s ADR framework must be transformed from one designed around efficiency to one designed around equity, genuinely accessible to all, regardless of class, gender, caste or digital literacy.
The framework proposed in this paper is not utopian. Each of its four pillars (qualitative Lok Adalat evaluation, gender-sensitive matrimonial mediation, inclusive ODR design, and constitutionally accountable informal dispute resolution) has international precedent and domestic legal grounding. The challenge is not one of imagination but of institutional will. NALSA, the Law Commission, the Supreme Court’s Mediation and Conciliation Project Committee, and the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology all operate within the relevant policy space. What has thus far been lacking is a coordinated, equity-centred framework that connects these institutional actors around a shared metric: not how many disputes were resolved, but how fairly, and for whom.
It is also worth noting that equity-centred ADR is not in tension with efficiency. On the contrary, settlements that reflect genuinely informed consent are less likely to be repudiated or renegotiated, or to generate downstream disputes. Mediation outcomes reached by parties with comparable bargaining power are more durable. ODR platforms with vernacular interfaces reach a broader user base and therefore resolve a greater volume of disputes. Informal dispute resolution forums that operate within constitutional constraints are more likely to produce outcomes that communities respect and comply with. The case for equity in ADR is therefore also a pragmatic case. Building equity into the architecture of dispute resolution is not a concession to idealism; it is the most effective route to a system that actually works.
Ultimately, the legitimacy of any dispute resolution mechanism depends not merely on its institutional design but on the lived experience of those who rely upon it. Measuring success through disposal statistics alone obscures whether vulnerable communities actually receive meaningful justice. An equity-centred approach demands continuous empirical evaluation, transparent institutional accountability, and sustained policy reform responsive to social realities. Only by embedding fairness, participation and inclusivity into every stage of ADR can India fulfil its constitutional promise of equal access to justice for all its citizens while strengthening public confidence in its evolving justice delivery framework.
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Footnotes
1. Ministry of Law & Justice, Lok Sabha Unstarred Question No. 854, Pending Cases in Various Courts (answered July 26, 2024) (India) (reporting National Judicial Data Grid figures of 84,045 cases pending in the Supreme Court, 60,11,678 in the High Courts and 4,53,51,913 in the district and subordinate courts).
2. The Legal Services Authorities Act, 1987, No. 39, Acts of Parliament, 1987 (India), §§ 19–22.
3. The Arbitration and Conciliation (Amendment) Act, 2015, No. 3, Acts of Parliament, 2016 (India), §§ 15, 19 (inserting § 29A, time limit for arbitral awards, and substituting § 36, enforcement); The Arbitration and Conciliation (Amendment) Act, 2019, No. 33, Acts of Parliament, 2019 (India), §§ 5–6, 10.
4. Ministry of Law & Justice, Rajya Sabha Unstarred Question No. 2353, Free Access to Justice (answered Mar. 12, 2026) (India) (reporting 33,82,93,386 cases settled in National Lok Adalats in calendar years 2023 to 2025).
5. The Legal Services Authorities Act, 1987, No. 39, Acts of Parliament, 1987 (India), § 21(2).
6. State of Punjab v. Jalour Singh, (2008) 2 SCC 660, ¶ 12 (India).
7. Id. ¶¶ 8–10.
8. Id. ¶ 9.
9. The Legal Services Authorities Act, 1987, No. 39, Acts of Parliament, 1987 (India), § 22C(8) (where the dispute does not relate to an offence).
10. K. Srinivas Rao v. D.A. Deepa, (2013) 5 SCC 226, ¶¶ 32, 36 (India).
11. The Family Courts Act, 1984, No. 66, Acts of Parliament, 1984 (India), § 9.
12. The Mediation Act, 2023, No. 32, Acts of Parliament, 2023 (India).
13. Afcons Infrastructure Ltd. v. Cherian Varkey Construction Co. (P) Ltd., (2010) 8 SCC 24, ¶¶ 18–19 (India).
14. Family Law (Family Dispute Resolution Practitioners) Regulations 2025 (Cth) s 20 (Austl.), https://www.legislation.gov.au/F2025L00304/asmade.
15. NITI Aayog, Designing the Future of Dispute Resolution: The ODR Policy Plan for India, at 6, 15 (Oct. 2021), https://www.niti.gov.in/sites/default/files/2021-11/odr-report-29-11-2021.pdf.
16. Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, The Indian Telecom Services Performance Indicators January–March, 2024, at Snapshot (July 4, 2024), https://www.trai.gov.in/sites/default/files/2024-09/QPIR_04072024_0.pdf.
17. Anita Kushwaha v. Pushap Sudan, (2016) 8 SCC 509, ¶¶ 28–29 (India).
18. NITI Aayog, supra note 15, at 61, 65.
19. Reserve Bank of India, Online Dispute Resolution (ODR) System for Digital Payments, RBI/2020-21/21, DPSS.CO.PD No.116/02.12.004/2020-21, ¶ 3 & Annex ¶ 5.1 (Aug. 6, 2020) (Annex ¶ 5.1 provides for “one or more” channels for lodging disputes, which may include paper-based forms, IVR, call centres and branches), https://www.rbi.org.in/Scripts/NotificationUser.aspx?Id=11946.
20. Securities and Exchange Board of India, Master Circular for Online Resolution of Disputes in the Indian Securities Market, SEBI/HO/OIAE/OIAE_IAD-3/P/CIR/2023/195, ¶¶ 11–12 (July 31, 2023, updated as on Dec. 28, 2023), https://www.sebi.gov.in/sebi_data/attachdocs/dec-2023/1703763993735.pdf.
21. NITI Aayog, supra note 15, at 57.
22. Id. at 66.
23. Shakti Vahini v. Union of India, (2018) 7 SCC 192, ¶¶ 23–24, 47 (India).
24. The Protection of Civil Rights Act, 1955, No. 22, Acts of Parliament, 1955 (India).
25. The Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, No. 33, Acts of Parliament, 1989 (India).