RIGHT TO LIFE: AN ILLUSION IN THE TIMES OF PANDEMIC

By -

The author of this blog is Amal Shukla  2nd year BA LLB(H) student at LLOYD LAW COLLEGE, GREATER NOIDA, UTTAR PRADESH.

According to Merriam Webster, Constitution is the basic principles and laws of a nation, state, or social group that determine the powers and duties of the government and guarantee certain rights to the people in it.
[1]


Every citizen living in the world’s largest democracy assumes that this holy book[2] will protect them from every condition, will explain to them the right and the wrong in black and white, and will not put them into any grey area. People expect that this holy book will explain those rights which they can avail and those rights which they deserve just because of the mere fact that they are the citizen of the world’s largest democracy, India. One of the most important from all of them is the article 21, Protection of Life and Personal Liberty which provides that no person shall be deprived of his life or personal liberty “except according to the procedure establish by law”.[3] It is available to every person, citizen, and alien. The core concept of the right to life is to provide the bare necessities, minimum and basic requirements that are essential and unavoidable for a person.[4] In the case of Kharak Singh v. State of Uttar Pradesh[5], the Supreme Court quoted and held that: “By the term “life” as here used something more is meant than mere animal existence. The inhibition against its deprivation extends to all those limbs and faculties by which life is enjoyed. The provision equally prohibits the mutilation of the body by amputation of an armored leg or the pulling out of an eye, or the destruction of any other organ of the body through which the soul communicates with the outer world.”

On 25th March 2020, the nation went into a lockdown and since then whatever as a human being we have witnessed is way beyond our thinking capacity which has compelled us to think whether the true value and meaning of the right to life been upheld at the time of pandemic?

 In the case of U.P. Avas Vikas Parishad v. Friends Coop. Housing Society Limited[6]  Right to Shelter has been recognized as a fundamental right that springs from the right to residence secured in article 19(1)(e) and the right to life guaranteed by article 21. Shelter for a human being, therefore, is not mere protection of his life and limb. It is however where he has opportunities to grow physically, mentally, intellectually, and spiritually.[7]Even though the honorable judiciary has explained the value of this right but the status quo has presented a situation in which even those people who have the luxury of their own shelter are unable to access it as they are stuck in different cities for months. the factories are shut, the construction sites are shut due to which labors and workers are left without jobs, shelter or money after the nationwide lockdown, and over which they don’t even have proper facilities to go to their native places.
[8] [9]
The incident at Anand Vihar, Delhi made this fact very clear that there are thousands of people who are stuck and want to go back to their native places.[10] It was a clear indication of the political system to help them. When these people got no facilities from the authorities they were seen leaving the city on foot owing to the lack of transport. Eventually, on 8th may 2020 a train crashed into a group of migrant workers walking along the railroad tracks on their way back to their home state killing at least 16.[11]These workers had started from Jalna to go to Bhusawal (both in Maharashtra) - a distance of 157 kilometer - and had planned to go to their native places Umariya and Shahdol in Madhya Pradesh, which is about 850 kilometers away.[12]

The Government sheltered them or they made their own shelter through all these years but unfortunately, when they need it the most they didn’t have the right to access it. Is this not the violation of their right to shelter? All this is happening now in the time of this pandemic. So how the true value and meaning of the right to life given under the judgment of the Honorable Supreme Court and article 21 has been upheld at the time of this pandemic?
In PUCL vs. UOI,[13] S.C. held that people who (aged, infirm, disabled, destitute women, children & men, pregnant and lactating women) are starving because of their inability to purchase food grains have the right to get good U/A. 21 and therefore they ought to be provided the same free of cost by the State out of the surplus stock especially. when grains are unused and rotting. According to Credit Suisse in its 2018 Global Wealth Report the 10% who own 77.4% of the country’s wealth is categorized is the rich sector, whereas, the majority of the population i.e. 60% of the Indians who have been categorized into the middle class collectively own just 4.7%. However, the richest sections of the Indian population which is just 1% owns 51.5% of the total wealth of the economy.  

The wealth distribution in India is bizarre and even if we ignore these statistics a basic question arises that how will the people who have to earn daily to feed their family be able to sustain for months without any income. The people around us are struggling the most, the food delivery personnel, the mechanics, the guards. the problem lies in the system as the lower-middle-class people neither come under BPL(below poverty line) so that they can get benefits from the government nor they are capable enough to survive by their own in a situation like this as daily income used to be there the only source of expenditure. Many have and many will soon become destitute and won’t be able to purchase food but what’s even sadder is that these people are not getting recognized by the political system. Is this not the violation of their right to food? so how is the meaning of this fundamental right being upheld during the time of pandemic?
[14]

Whenever we talk about the right to life with “dignity”. In  Francis Coralie v. Union Territory of Delhi[15] it was observed  that: “The right to live includes the right to live with human dignity and all that goes along with it, viz., the bare necessities of life such as adequate nutrition, clothing, and shelter over the head and facilities for reading writing and expressing oneself in diverse forms, freely moving about and mixing and mingling with fellow human beings and must include the right to basic necessities, the basic necessities of life and also the right to carry on functions and activities as constituting the bare minimum expression of human self.”


On May, 11th 2020 a group of 20 people traveling from Mumbai to Lucknow from tempo or a goods carrier met with an accident in which the driver died on the spot but his family survived with injuries after their vehicle was hit by a speeding car on the Mumbai-Nashik highway.[16]Who is it responsible for this cause? This shows the helplessness and desperation of these people to reach their native land and explains to us how much our system has failed to protect its people. It is impossible to believe that the “dignity” described in the above judgment by the honorable judiciary is being provided to the people in the present time by the legislature and executive. Right to life has been held to be the heart of the Constitution, the most organic and progressive provision in our living constitution, the foundation of our laws, but it seems like this heart is in an arrest because today a global health crisis has shown us an unfortunate reality that maybe these fundamental rights are not so fundamental in nature maybe they have to be achieved or to be fought for and if that’s not the case then why the people who are majorly suffering are economically backward or who are not well equipped with economic resources. What started with a question remains a the question whether the true value and meaning of the right to life is been upheld at the time of pandemic?

[2] Last advice as judge: Statute our holy book. available at https://www.telegraphindia.com/india/last-advice-as-judge-statute-our-holy-book/cid/1770970 (last visited May 13,2020)
[3] Subhash C. Kashyap, Our Constitution 133 (National Book Trust, New Delhi,  5th edn ., 2011)
[4]Article 21 of the Constitution of India – Right to Life and Personal Liberty. available at https://www.lawctopus.com/academike/article-21-of-the-constitution-of-india-right-to-life-and-personal-liberty/ (last visited May 13,2020)
[5] AIR 1963 SC 1295
[6] AIR 1996 SC 114
[7] Chameli Singh v. State of U.P AIR 1996 SC 1051
[10] In photos: At Delhi-UP border, thousands try to squeeze into limited state buses to get back home. available at https://scroll.in/latest/957567/in-photos-at-delhi-up-border-thousands-try-to-squeeze-into-limited-state-buses-to-get-back-home(last visited May 13,2020)
[11]Maharashtra train accident: How 16 migrant labourers were killed. available at
 https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/maharashtra-train-accident-how-16-migrant-labourers-were-killed/story-kdJHMdZU3T2ubxXNdnUKYL.html (last visited May 13,2020)
[12] ibid
[13] AIR 1997 SC 568
[15] AIR 1981 S.C. 746
[16]Going Home,Said Migrant Driving Packed Tempo. Hours Later, He Was Dead. available athttps://www.ndtv.com/mumbai-news/coronavirus-lockdown-mumbai-witnesses-reverse-migration-migrants-leave-mumbai-in-hordes-2227447(last visited May 13,2020)



Comments

Post a Comment