Economic Rights: Issues & Suggestions with Reference to Constitutionalization, Adjudication & Policy Making

– Palak Jain

The Economic Darwinism in the past three centuries has resulted in a significant increment in the desires and needs of an industrial man. However, the existing system has failed to create means to address them. In such scenarios of increasing failure of systems to address the needs and desires of people, if the law has to act as ‘a system of social engineering’, it is essential that it creates a framework to eradicate social frictions by providing dignity through authority of rights.

Rights are most commonly defined as legal, ethical, normative or social principles and basic rules about what is allowed to people, or what they are entitled to according to some legal, social, theological, or ethical systems. With the evolution of civilizations and mankind, it is steadily being concluded that in order to secure a dignified life, it is essential that certain basic inalienable human rights are addressed and upheld by the State.

In the evolution of these human rights, while initially the primary focus was on civil and political rights, the second generation has advanced to addressing the social, cultural and economic rights and finally the third generation i.e. minority rights have also become a pertinent topic of discussion in the realm. The author focuses on the second generation of human rights, i.e. socio-economic rights. The term socio-economic rights have become so common, that often it is assumed that social rights and economic rights are interchangeable.

The Constitutions of numerous countries, with special reference to India have granted the economic rights to its citizens, as if a term in vogue. However, the reach of such rights to the stakeholders remains doubtful. The author seeks to analyze the existing literature on economic rights and the debate surrounding the issue in Part I. Further, it is also essential to understand the stand-point of Judiciary of India in addressing economic rights violation of the citizens. A pertinent question must be raised, as to the manner of redressal of such economic, the justiciability of such rights in case of state actions and adequacy of directive principles in such redressals. Finally, it is often observed that bringing and enforcing economic rights through policy-making often proves to be a futile and tedious task. The author aims to investigate the problem linked with such enforcement through policy-making from a political perspective. On the basis of these studies, the author concludes the existing state of economic rights in India and suggests corrective measures that can be adopted by the policy-makers for upholding the economic rights of the citizens in a true sense.

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