Prime Minister Narendra Modi, addressing the Director Generals of Police conference in 2024, suggested replacing “danda with data” so India can place “citizens, dignity and justice first” through jan vishwas (trusting citizens). Since then, the policy project to review unjust jail prescriptions has articulated the Jan Vishwas Siddhant (principles), passed the Jan Vishwas Bill, notified the labour codes, identified obsolete laws, and amended the Companies Act. This combined interrogation of jail provisions across 950-plus laws represents the world’s largest decriminalisation of compliance — more than 12,500 across citizens and enterprises.

Should India be the only country to make ticketless travel on trains a jailable offence? Should cattle straying onto private land, publishers failing to deposit books with government libraries, court fee defaults, unpaid electricity bills, statistical reporting, and drying clothes in public view attract imprisonment? Should the law prescribe jail for employers who do not have their canteen within 15 m of the latrine, who do not have taps conveniently placed, who do not have a spittoon, who do not meet the canteen committee, and who do not keep physical records within 3 km of the factory? Should the sale of cosmetics be subject to the same jail provisions as medicines? Should the first offence of driving above the speed limit be jailable? Thankfully, these are all now gone. But our 5-crore case backlog in courts is unsurprising; one act of policy irrationality — prescribing jail for cheque bouncing — accounts for 43 lakh cases.

The importance of Jan Vishwas requires recognising that a few jail provisions in laws can cascade into thousands of compliance requirements with criminal consequences, because laws passed by........

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