Nyaaya’s work though simplistic in description involves many curveballs in its execution. This last year has been interesting for us from the content perspective. We added to our repository of laws with the number of legislations on our website touching 813. We have also created 27 legal explainers and 6 guides. We have written on a plethora of topics. The topics covered social welfare laws such as laws on dowry, sexual harassment to more practical concerns of the common person such as cheque bouncing, and video piracy.
But as the end of this year approached, the team sat down to discuss what has worked for us so far and what we want to build on.
The team did an in-depth review on how best to further Nyaaya’s vision. The goal seems simple at the outset. But its implementation has many nuances. It involves taking a lot of calls from a practical viewpoint. This is because the law is dynamic and vast. It is like a huge ocean that is always in movement. It is large in volume. It is never clear which way the current is moving. Nor is it ever clear what the law is exactly. Since the legislature and judiciary are always hemming and hawing at it.
The only time it makes itself known clearly to the common person is when a landmark judgment hits the headlines of newspapers. It is much like the waves hitting the shore.
It is this precise ambiguity, and fluidity that we are trying to simplify. Simplify and provide actionable content to the layperson.
How does one lend a helping hand to a person wanting to walk through a maze? And how do we provide a lending hand to people who interact with laws in different situations?
It became clear to us that we should steer clear of advisory law. Of course, it is illegal for us to provide legal advice as a lawyer does. But, in the course of explaining the law we wanted to refrain from becoming too specific. We are not here to give people tailor-made solutions to specific circumstances. We want to give general information to people. Information that is useful for any person to navigate the law in certain situations. But the question is what is general information in any given area of law? The line is hard to draw.
For example, for a woman facing sexual harassment at her workplace; it is necessary for her to know she can complain to the Internal Complaints Committee at her workplace. But how does one explain all the actions that can be sexual harassment? The law gives definitions but the definitions are deliberately ambiguous and broad. To encompass a broad range of possibilities.
So we came up with a new format which clearly explains to people their rights and duties. We explain what are illegal actions under the law. We also explain what are the repercussions of such illegal actions. When the information is not encompassed in this format, we have a Q&A section. This attempts to answer more specific questions that are generally relevant. We also have a checklist to ensure that a person has actionable information at hand. We finally have a glossary of terms to explain terms specific to the topic at hand in simple language.
Nyaaya as a team is expanding. As of date, we have only one content writer. Interns who work with us for a period of a month or two assist the content writing process. But, from the beginning of this year, we will have one more content writer and two legal researchers. This increase in strength will allow us to generate content at a faster pace. It will also ensure that the research we put into the content will be of higher quality. We will be spending time talking to stakeholders aware of the law in action. We will be talking to social workers at NGO’s, bank managers, government officials, practicing lawyers etc. for more clarity on how the law works in action in various spheres. These stakeholders help in the application of the law. They are the people who are aware of the actionable content of law (and where there isn’t any information). We hope that this will ensure our content is helpful in real time for people who don’t know the law and have a problem that has legal answers.
We also hope to improve our content quality by ensuring that it is in the simplest language possible. We are thinking of content review methods to ensure this. We want to ensure that our English language explanations of the law are the best possible output of simplicity and actionable information. Then, we can translate them into various regional languages. starting with Hindi. We also hope to make our content more digestible with videos and graphics (because honestly, law can be boring many times!).
We also did other interesting work, this past year, on the content front. We helped the host Newslaundary’s web-series called Consti-tution in creating content for his episode -the Judiciary. We told him essential information that everyone needs to know about the judiciary. We also did a guest appearance on a Facebook Live review of the Judiciary episode. It’s been a fun year. A lot of work with new vigour is also looking our way this new year.
We hope we can continue to provide better, simpler and actionable information to everyone about the law!
Happy New Year!
