Good and bad are two dimensions of everything. The race between the two is as old as human history. At times, if not always, one dimension weighs and dominates more but if it is the negative one which dominates; it becomes a matter of headache and serious concern.
‘Stay at home’ is a hollow rhetoric for many Indians who do not have a home. The Census of 2011 revealed that there are more than 17 lakh homeless people in our nation. Right to housing has been recognized as a fundamental right in a few modern constitutions (see, for example, Section 26 of the South African Constitution).
In India, right to property is longer a fundamental right as Article 19 (1)(f) was deleted from the Constitution with effect from 20 June 1979. Today, it is, at best, a constitutional right, as per Article 300A of the Constitution, which says that persons should not be deprived of property, except by authority of law.
This constitutional silence about an enforceable right for residence was sought to be indemnified to some extent by the parliamentary legislations.
The efforts, however, met with an executive apathy due to which the country now pays a hefty cost. While the right to health has not been textually guaranteed as a fundamental right in the Indian constitution, it has by now been firmly entrenched as such.
Through a series of progressive pronouncements delivered in the last two decades, starting from the 1995 case of Consumer Education and Research Centre versus Union of India, the Supreme Court has recognized the right as flowing from Article 21 of the constitution
The pandemic will go and disappear but only our attitude and character shown in the crisis will be remembered for all the times to come.
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