Between 2009 and 2019, India invested less than 2% of its GDP in public health. This percentage has continued to drop, with barely 1.1% of the GDP going towards public health last year. This lack of investment has come home to roost, with India unable to cope effectively with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. India now has the third-highest number of cases, behind only the US and Brazil.
As of August 18, India has 27 lakh cases and counting, with over 55,000 new patients identified that day, with a total death tally close to 52,000 and counting. The handling of this crisis has exposed the weaknesses in the public healthcare system in the country and asked questions of the decades of neglect and abdication of responsibility by the successive governments, both at the centre and in the states. It has also resulted in the violation of the fundamental rights of some of the poorest and most vulnerable classes and sections of Indian society.
It has also brought into relief the consequences of the neglect of public health by successive governments, both at the centre and in the states, in violation of both their constitutional obligations as established by the Supreme Court as well as the best practices relating to the provision of public healthcare worldwide.
Right to health in India
Want to publish your own articles on DistilINFO Publications?
Send us an email, we will get in touch with you.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to which India is signatory, recognises the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being to humans including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond human control.
The right to healthcare is not explicitly stated to be a fundamental right under the Constitution of India. Article 47 of the Constitution does impose the following directive on the state:
“The State shall regard the raising of the level of nutrition and the standard of living of its people and the improvement of public health as among its primary duties and, in particular, the State shall endeavour to bring about prohibition of the consumption except for medicinal purposes of intoxicating drinks and of drugs which are injurious to health.” (emphasis added)
But this, of course, is not enforceable against the state since it is a directive principle. However, the Supreme Court has clearly mentioned in Akhil Bharatiya Soshit Karmachari Sangh (1981) and Vincent Panikurlangara (1987), that while directive principles cannot be held to be enforceable against the state, they can still be binding. Further, the jurisprudential progress on the scope and purport of the directive principles of state policy over time as reflected by various landmark precedents by the apex court traverse the shift from plain non-enforceability to a harmonious interrelationship between fundamental rights and directive principles, particularly in specifying that the directive principles are supplementary and complementary to fundamental rights.
Moreover, the Supreme Court, along with various high courts, have served to create a taxonomy of specific rights relating to healthcare under the aegis of the Right to Life enshrined in Article 21 of the constitution.
In Paschim Bangal Khet Mazdoor Samity vs State of West Bengal (1996), the Supreme Court held:
“Article 21 imposes an obligation on the State to safeguard the right to life of every person. Preservation of human life is thus of paramount importance. The Government hospitals run by the State and the medical officers employed therein are duty bound to extend medical assistance for preserving human life. Failure on the part of a Government hospital to provide timely medical treatment to a person in need of such treatment results in violation of his right to life guaranteed under Article 21.”
This was further emphasised in State of Punjab vs Ram Lubhaya Bagga (1998), where the SC held that it was a constitutional obligation of the state to provide healthcare, that being the primary obligation under Article 21 read with Article 47 of the constitution.
Source: Science Thewire