Kalam stresses need for conflict resolution outside court

Chennai, Sep 4 (UNI) President A P J Abdul Kalam today called for a conflict-free society where there will be no dispute and even if there are differences, they will be sorted out amicably.

Speaking at the first anniversary celebrations of the Tamil Nadu Mediation and Conciliation Centre, Dr Kalam said if the people fought amongst each other, they would have no time for development.

Referring to Chitrakoot in Madhya Pradesh, where an institute for facilitating a cohesive, conflict-free society was functioning, he said 80 villages around Chitrakoot were almost litigation free.

The villagers had unanimously decided that no dispute would go to court. Differences would be sorted out amicably in the village.

This model could be propagated in Tamil Nadu by some societal organisations. Mediators and conciliators could facilitate it.

Mediation was a decision making process in which the parties were assisted by a third party: the mediator, who attempted to improve the process of decision making and assisted the parties to reach an outcome to which each of them could assent, he said.

Conciliation was a form of assisted negotiation between two or more parties in which an additional person, the conciliator, intervened with the object of facilitating a settlment between the parties. To some extent, in practice, the two might overlap.

The essential distinction was that the role of the concilator was more interventionist than that of the mediator. Mediation might result in resolution of a dispute. Conciliation emphasised dissolution of a dispute. This was definitely a faster method of dispute resolution compared to conventional court processes.

Mediators and concilators should have a righteous character.

Dr Kalam suggested that in cases involving parties from rural areas, the mediators and conciliators could move to the site of occurrence of the problem and resolve the issue.

More UNI XR AA dkb ht2132