The Right to Livelihood
Chapter Forty-Six
Syllabus topic 2, "Emerging Human Rights Jurisprudence and the Role of the Judiciary"
Pages 214 to 218 of 760
In one line
The right to livelihood is part of the right to life under article 21, because a person cannot live except by the means of living, and a deprivation of livelihood therefore requires a fair, just and reasonable procedure established by law.
The reasoning
Stated as a syllogism, because that is how the Court put it.
Article 21 protects life, and life has been held to mean more than mere animal existence.
No person can live without the means of living, that is, without livelihood.
Therefore a deprivation of livelihood is a deprivation of life, unless it is effected by a procedure established by law that is fair, just and reasonable.
The elegance of the reasoning is also its limit, and a good answer notices this. It establishes a procedural protection, not a substantive entitlement to work: the State must follow a fair procedure before depriving a person of their livelihood, and it is not obliged to provide one.
The decision
The case. Olga Tellis v. Bombay Municipal Corporation, (1985) 3 SCC 545.
Facts. Pavement and slum dwellers in Bombay were sought to be evicted and their dwellings demolished by the Municipal Corporation under a provision of the municipal statute permitting removal of encroachments from a public footpath or street, without notice. They petitioned under article 32, contending that they lived on the pavements because their work was there, that eviction would take away their livelihood and so their life, and that the statutory power to remove without notice was arbitrary.
Held. The right to life under article 21 includes the right to livelihood, because no person can live without the means of living and, if the right to livelihood is not treated as part of the right to life, the easiest way of depriving a person of their right to life would be to deprive them of their means of livelihood. The procedure prescribed must be fair, just and reasonable, so the statutory power to remove an encroachment without notice had to be read as ordinarily requiring notice and a hearing. The eviction was nonetheless permitted on the facts, because the pavement dwellers had no right to occupy a public footpath and the Court held that the Corporation was entitled to remove them after a hearing, with directions as to the timing of removal and as to alternative sites for those with earlier documentation.
A candidate should give the last sentence. The petitioners established the proposition and lost the case, and stating that is the difference between an accurate answer and a slogan.
What follows from it
Four consequences, and they run through the rest of the paper.
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