There is no denying that the justice system in India is in a downtrodden state mainly because litigation in our country is expensive, complex to work around and time-consuming. The problem exists in the justice system because of various reasons, one of them being the lack of efficient and capable institutions of producing accomplished and proficient lawyers. Furthermore, the paucity of adept legal professionals across the country, people resort to paying a select few established lawyers for their legal troubles. This increases the workload of these lawyers which causes unavoidable delays frustrating all the stakeholders involved. These factors have started to repel people from taking legal recourse to get their grievances addressed and only do so when they find they are out of options. As a result, parties to a dispute attempt to let go of their grievances because they perceive litigation as the only formal means of addressing their grievances. Therefore, there exists a vacuum currently, which needs to be occupied by a cheaper and speedy procedure of addressing grievances. 

Apart from the above-mentioned factors within the legal system that discourage efficient redressal, there exist a list of structural barriers which stop the people from approaching the courts to look for solutions. From income to gender, the age to caste; numerous such structural barriers play a role in making the courts inaccessible to a big portion of our country’s population. Moreover, these structural barriers exist to impact the marginalized sections of society disproportionately. Dalits and women face the brunt of these structural barriers more than any other community as they are more often than not actively discouraged from pursuing justice in courts of law. The duty towards the public to structure an alternative redressal mechanism was extrapolated by the Kerala High Court in the case ‘T. Vineet v. Manju S. Nair’. It was stated by the court that this duty is not only mentioned under the Code of Civil Procedure but also forms a duty that courts owe to the people. If ADR mechanisms were made accessible to the people, it would make justice a more accessible goal for everyone. Subsequently, it would drastically reduce the burden of the courts which would improve the quality of justice imparted by them. The requirement for the adoption of alternative techniques is extremely important by the Law Commission on many occasions. 

Alternative Dispute Resolutions usually include neutral evaluation, arbitration, conciliation and mediation. Arbitration and neutral evaluation consist of adjudicatory forms of resolution which is concluded by a third independent party. A neutral evaluation has the authority to deliver non-binding judgments after evaluation of the merits of the dispute. On the other hand, the process of arbitration results in a binding award by a private third party. Conciliation and mediation mechanisms focus on delivering ‘settlements’ between the involved parties instead of adjudicating a unilateral award. Although conciliation and mediation are used interchangeably by legislations, the Supreme Court has differentiated between the two based on the roles played by the third party. The conciliator plays a more active role in the entire process and proposes terms of the settlement, contrary to the mediator who assumes a more passive role in the process of mediation which is more informal in nature. The mediator merely sets the tone of the process and encourages the involved parties to come to a settlement.