New Delhi, CCS News: To achieve maximum compliance, laws must be clear and easy to understand. However, 70% of the national laws in India are difficult for the general public to read and understand — suggests a study released by the Centre for Civil Society, in collaboration with Mercatus Center. The study conducts a quantitative analysis of all national laws (876 laws) in India. Of the 876 national laws studied, 608 laws were found to be either ‘difficult’ or ‘very difficult’ to read. As per the study, ‘The Right to Information Act-2005’ is among the top 10 laws in the country which are the most difficult to read.
A quantitative analysis of laws done by Delhi-based think tank Center for Civil Society (CCS) and Mercatus Center, George Mason University revealed
CCS and Mercatus Center also conducted a similar quantitative analysis of all 145 state school education laws. This study finds that the majority of the state school education laws fall under the ‘difficult’ to read category and will not be easy to comprehend for an ordinary Indian citizen. As per the study, Mizoram has the most difficult to read laws followed by Delhi and Puducherry. Top three states with the easiest to read laws are Manipur, Telangana, and Himachal Pradesh.
An individual must at least be an undergraduate to read and understand laws in India: Study
The Centre for Civil Society’s Research Department released both the studies and their findings on the birth anniversary of Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar—Father of India’s constitution and first Minister of Law and Justice of the country.
While introducing the study, Advocate Prashant Narang, Associate Director, CCS stated that. “India has indices to measure the ease of living, ease of doing business, and the quality of school education. What we need is a way to assess the quality of laws. Our latest study, done in collaboration with Mercatus, aims to quantify different aspects of a regulation to tell a story on law-making in India. What better day to revisit the kind of laws that we write and the direction we are headed in, than the birth anniversary of India’s first Law Minister— B.R. Ambedkar”