Shimla, August 20 (IANS) India needs to develop skills among the youth and undergo reforms in the land and market laws that unproductively freeze agricultural land and produce markets, Chief Justice of India Justice T.S. Thakur said here on Saturday.
Moreover, increase in suicide by farmers and resurgence cannot sit together, he said.
"Land reforms remain an unfulfilled project since 1950s and our growth carries a burden of fewer and fewer jobs," Justice Thakur said in his convocation address in Himachal Pradesh University.
He said the workforce that "falls into the urban middle class today constitutes only two per cent of the population".
"The urban educated middle class and the blue collar urban workers, who form the base of consumer growth story, face a shrinking number of government jobs."
Justice Thakur said the immediate need is re-skilling to be job relevant and a network of agricultural land and market laws that unproductively freeze land and produce markets.
Admitting that judiciary has its own challenges of making access to justice easy, the Chief Justice of India said: "Justice that is unpolluted and speedy remains a distant dream for a variety of reasons that we need to address, especially when the country is making great strides on the development front."
According to him, alternative dispute resolution mechanisms like arbitration and mediation would play a greater role in the future.
Justice Thakur said a resurgent India is facing a host of challenges including global competitiveness, social inclusiveness and environmental sustainability.
"The world is moving to machine learning, machine doing, genetic astrology of future diseases a resurgent India with institutions that can handle this is not possible without a resurgent idea of justice that is actually enforced."
Justice Thakur, who was conferred an honorary Doctor of Letters (D.Litt) degree by Governor Acharya Devvrat, said increasing farmers' suicides and resurgence cannot sit together.
Supporting Prime Narendra Modi's digital dream initiative, he said with 332 million internet users and 700 million smartphones, Aadhar is the world's largest digital infrastructure and a unified payment interface that allows all payments to be made by a mobile phone.
"But that is only one side of the story of our progress."
On the gap between the rich and the poor, he stressed upon the three pillars of the democratic set up that have many challenges.
"The legislature and the executive have formidable challenge of banishing poverty by preventing concentration of wealth in the hands of a few."
Himachal Pradesh High Court Chief Justice Mansoor Ahmed Mir said the educated people should think logically and scientifically, which a majority of educated class was not doing.
Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh said he was happy to see that the girls had outnumbered boys in the convocation ceremony.
