A new step in India's online dispute resolution movement

Earlier this month, Mint reported that the central government's Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) will soon launch a platform for online dispute resolution (ODR) for small enterprises.

ODR is the digital version of ADR, or alternative dispute resolution – the process of settling disputes between two parties without resorting to lawsuits and courtroom trials. Private companies, government bodies or citizens can all opt for ADR, but disputes must necessarily be civil in nature, such as property conflicts or work contracts, and not criminal cases.

In ADR, the disputes are settled with the help of a third party, through processes like arbitration, mediation, conciliation and negotiation. ODR uses the same processes through specialised online platforms and tools.

By allowing small businesses to resolve civil disputes online, the MSME ministry's ODR platform can offer some relief to its official ADR service provider – the Micro and Small Enterprises Facilitation Councils, currently burdened with over 42,000 pending cases of disputes.

When it's ready, this will be the latest in a slew of ODR platforms in India across public and private sectors. It will also be the latest step forward in India's ODR movement, which has become an increasingly crucial part of legal reform in the country.

At the forefront of this movement – the pioneer of it, in fact – is Agami, a non-profit that the Godrej Foundation partners with and supports. Agami has been working to digitise India's ADR landscape since 2018, long before the Covid-19 pandemic compelled both government and private enterprises to embrace it.

In India, Agami has played a role in helping stakeholders realise that ODR is beneficial to everyone: it is cheaper and faster than seeking justice in formal courtrooms, gives parties more freedom over how they want to resolve disputes, and eases the burden on already strained courts and ADR platforms. It has the potential, then, to bring more efficiency to India's justice delivery system.

Agami's work has been recognised by Niti Aayog in its 2020 policy plan for ODR in India. In 2021, former Chief Justice DY Chandrachud also highlighted the promising future of ODR, stating that it has the potential to "decentralise, democratise, diversify and disentangle" India's justice delivery mechanism.

As of this writing, Agami has nurtured and accelerated more than 20 startups that provide ODR services – some in the form of software tools, some offering legal expertise, and some using artificial intelligence to help resolve disputes. Back in 2018, there were just 3 such startups in India.

Agami has also helped over 75 enterprises to adopt ODR in these seven years. In fact, Agami co-founder Sachin Malhan has pointed out that by 2022, over 6 million disputes had been onboarded onto ODR platforms.