'Online dispute resolution has citizens at the centre: Nilekani

Online dispute resolution (ODR) is a ‘great example’ of social engineering that enables citizens’ agency, Infosys chairman and co-founder Nandan Nilekani said on Sunday.

He was delivering the 30th convocation address of NLSIU here.

The annual convocation organised offline after two consecutive Covid-induced virtual editions were presided over by the Chief Justice of India and NLSIU chancellor U U Lalit.

Nilekani said that over 16 million disputes have been onboarded through ODR systems.

“Creative collaborations between private ODR providers and legal services authorities have resulted in over a dozen online lok adalats. Over 100 companies and 40 government departments are using ODR,” he said.

While there is a need for better formal systems of justice, including courts and legal aid, better informal systems – ‘where 9 out of 10 legal issues reside’ – are also imperative, he said. Stating that ODR should not be conceived as mere digitisation of alternative dispute resolution, he pointed out that ODR involves thousands of mediators and young case managers, most of them law students, as enablers.

Multidisciplinary approach

NLSIU vice-chancellor Prof Sudhir Krishnaswamy said, in line with the National Education Policy 2020, proposals for multidisciplinary programmes and larger university clusters, the NLSIU is building a cluster with the Indian Institute of Science and the Indian Institute of Management in Bengaluru.

“Together, we will be in a position to expand our academic programmes and research projects in new collaborative directions,” Krishnaswamy said.

NLSIU has continued to expand its student intake in the BA LLB, LLM (Master of Laws) and MPP (Master’s Programme in Public Policy) programmes. It has also reduced the faculty-student ratios, he said in the VC’s report.