Judicial Construction Of The Right To Clean Water As The Fundamental Human Right In India: Exploring Through Environmental Justice Framework
Amit Kumar Singh, Ph.D. Research Scholar, Centre for the Study of Law and Governance, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.
ABSTRACT
The emergence and recognition of human rights have their historical context, and they shall be interpreted and construed in the new and emerging material conditions of society and change. Since the formal recognition of International Instruments of Human Rights by the United Nations and the Constitution of India in the form of fundamental rights and directive principles, the material conditions of society have changed drastically in terms of socio-economic- technological changes as empowering tools as well as disruptive technologies. It has serious consequences on fundamental human rights of a pollution-free environment and other rights derived from the environment and ecology, especially in developing countries and on weaker sections of society.
The judiciary in India, amidst the dialectical nature of development and damage to environment and ecology, and subsequent violation of rights of people in terms of environmental rights, has played a very significant and historic role in developing environmental law and justice principles in general and the right to clean water as a fundamental human right under the broad contour of right to life enshrined under Article 21 of Constitution of India.
Thus, this paper is an attempt to use the environmental justice framework to examine and analyse the constitutive elements of this environmental justice framework as used by the courts for constructing the right to clean water as an emerging human right and the inadequacy of this framework in resolving structural issues of power-relations and ingrained hierarchical social relations, and their subsequent impacts on enjoyment and effective exercise of this fundamental human right to clean water. Thus, the paper will attempt to re-examine the environmental justice theory in the context of the gap between empirical social reality and judicial construction of the right to clean water.
Keywords: judicial construction, right to clean water, human rights, environmental justice.
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