What is the issue?
- The outbreak of acute encephalitis syndrome (AES) in Bihar led to close to 350 cases and around 100 deaths. Click here to know more.
- The incident highlights the systemic failure of health care in the country and more importantly, calls for a discourse on the basic rights of citizens.
What are basic needs?
- Needs are different from wants; while the former is an unavoidable necessity, the latter is a wish.
- The determination of needs is done by a more objective criterion unlike wants which are driven by subjective criteria.
- Baisc needs are that without which people would be denied of a minimally decent life.
- Non-fulfillment of basic needs can cause great harm, even kill people. E.g. lack of adequate supply of water, food and air
What are basic rights?
- A right is something that is owed to people; it is not a favour offered.
- Basic rights flow from basic needs such as physical security or subsistence.
- In simple terms, basic rights are claims on the state to provide citizens with goods and services that satisfy their basic needs.
- Significantly, basic rights are a shield for the defenceless against the most damaging threats to their life.
- The basic rights that could possibly be prioritised as among the firsts are:
- right to physical security - socially guaranteed when the state provides a professional police force
- right to minimum economic security and subsistence - includes clean air, uncontaminated water, nutritious food, clothing and shelter
- right to primary health care
- right to free public expression of helplessness and frustration, if deprived of basic rights
What role does the State have?
- When something is identified as a basic right, it puts the state under a duty to enable its exercise i.e. the State becomes its guarantor.
- Elementary justice requires that before anything else, the state does everything at its disposal to satisfy all basic needs of its citizens.
- This particularly applies to those who cannot fend for themselves.
- Credible threats to the basic rights should be reduced by the government by establishing institutions and practices to assist the vulnerable.
- This, in turn, requires proper budgetary allocation.
- These demands, therefore, incorporate the rights -
- to make one’s vulnerability public
- to be informed about the acts of commission and omission of the government regarding anything that adversely affects the satisfaction of basic needs
- to critically examine and hold state officials publicly accountable
What is the way forward?
- The basic rights must be viewed primarily as positive.
- In other words, basic rights should be rights not against interference from the State (negative rights) but to the provision of something by the State.
- Just as individuals are punished for legal violations, the government must be held legally accountable for the violation of these basic rights.
- The systematic violation of basic rights must be treated on a par with the breakdown of constitutional machinery.
- To sum up, like the constitutional principle of a basic structure, it is time to articulate an equally robust doctrine of basic rights.
Source: The Hindu
