I had called my lawyer friend to discuss the second part of this story on Uniform Civil Code (UCC). The first part asked: Uniform for whom? This one asks another question: what is the return on investment for the citizen?
We normally understand return on investment in money. If I spend Rs 1,000, I should know what I got for it. A law costs money to draft, administer, register, enforce and litigate. It also consumes legislative time, administrative capacity and political capital. Lobbying, mobilisation and building political consensus are investments too. So before celebrating a law as historic, perhaps the citizen is entitled to ask: what did all this investment buy me?
That was where my conversation with my friend became interesting. Apart from discussing legal issues pertaining to the UCC, we discussed everything else. I asked him something basic: how many actual cases are there in which different personal laws have created a problem that only a Uniform Civil Code can solve? Cases where the existence of different personal laws itself is the problem.
That distinction matters. If a provision discriminates against a woman, Parliament can amend it. If divorce law is inadequate, it can be reformed. If adoption, guardianship or maintenance creates difficulty, those laws can be changed. The 2018 Law Commission made much the same broader point when it said a UCC was “neither necessary nor desirable at this stage”, and argued instead for reforming discriminatory provisions within personal laws.
So, the first question in calculating the UCC’s ROI is not whether equality is desirable. Of course it is. The question is whether uniformity is necessary to achieve it.
There is also a practical financial question. Uttarakhand, which has implemented a UCC, provided Rs 30 crore in its 2025-26 budget for implementation. That is one state’s administrative expenditure, not the national cost. A national code would involve legislation, rules, digital systems, registration, training, communication, enforcement and litigation.
Again, money is only part of the investment. Parliament has limited legislative time. Courts and officials have limited capacity. Political parties spend years building support, negotiating positions and mobilising. All of this has an opportunity cost. The citizen can therefore ask: what other problem could this money, administrative attention and political energy may have addressed?
Then comes democratic ROI. The BJP’s 2024 manifesto describes the UCC in terms of gender equality and says it should draw from the best traditions while harmonising them with modern times. That is a stated objective. The 2018 Law Commission offered a different route: reform personal laws rather than impose uniformity. The policy question, therefore, is whether equality is better achieved through one uniform framework or by making different frameworks fairer.
There is another complication. A law may benefit some citizens while creating anxieties for others. Uttarakhand’s UCC, for example, requires registration of live-in relationships. The government presents this as a way to protect rights and provide legal recognition. Critics have raised questions about privacy and personal autonomy. But it demonstrates something important: a law intended to provide protection can also expand the state’s presence in private life.
That is where social and psychological ROI becomes difficult to measure. We should not assume that a UCC will make any particular community fearful or alienated; there is not enough evidence for that claim. But neither should such concerns be dismissed without examination. If people feel that customary practices, religious identities or family choices are becoming less secure, does that change how they participate in public life? Do they become more cautious or less willing to engage? These are empirical questions.
The intergenerational question is harder. Laws become the environment in which children grow up and families make decisions. If communities feel culturally secure, that may reinforce their willingness to marry, settle, build businesses and raise families. If they feel culturally insecure, the opposite could happen. It would be irresponsible to claim that a UCC will cause migration, lower fertility or change national identification without evidence. But those are precisely the possible long-term effects that a serious ROI assessment should investigate.
This is where I find myself thinking about ‘Rajneeti’ differently — not merely as the politics of winning power, but as policy choices whose consequences travel across generations. A law of this scale deserves to be judged not only by the moment in which it is enacted, but by the society it helps create decades later.
There is also a larger ideological question. The BJP has included the UCC in its manifestos for decades, and the RSS has repeatedly passed resolutions supporting a uniform civil law. It does not, by itself, prove that the objective is to create a Hindu state or that the UCC will produce such an outcome. But it makes a legitimate question unavoidable: is the UCC primarily a legal reform project, or is it also part of a broader project of national consolidation and common identity?
If the latter is part of the purpose, that too belongs in the ROI calculation. Political objectives are not free. They require legislative time, administrative machinery, public mobilisation and political capital. Citizens are entitled to know what national objective is being pursued, what problem it should solve, and what trade-offs come with it.
Perhaps that is the simplest way to look at the UCC. Before asking whether it is historic or transformative, one should ask what it actually changes in the life of an ordinary citizen. How many people face a problem today because two different personal laws exist? How many will gain a right they did not have? How many will gain greater equality or legal certainty? And, equally, will anyone lose a choice, customary protection or avenue of recourse?
The return on investment, then, is not merely financial. It is the tangible improvement in citizens’ lives, alongside the protection or expansion of their rights and freedoms, measured against money, institutional capacity, political effort and social costs invested in achieving it.
That seems a reasonable question for the present government, especially for a law consequential as the Uniform Civil Code: after all the politics, mobilisation, legislation and expenditure, what exactly did the citizen get?
