Tags:
Journalism of Courage
The internationally funded leprosy eradication programme is the best example of the failure of the judicial process to enforce health law in Delhi. This in spite of the official reports showing a rising rate of leprosy in the Capital, which may soon become an almost endemic area for the disease. Worse, the management of the Bombay Prevention of Begging Act, 1959 to prevent begging in Delhi has become a golden gate for leprosy patients to become permanent beggars.
The Supreme Court took up the issue in right earnest. However when the case was about to evolve into a national, social and health education-cum-statistical policy, the matter was transferred to the Delhi High Court where it slumbers. Still, the issue of leprosy figures nowhere in the December 5-7 programme of the judge-run international conference on Global Health Law of the Indian Law Institute.
While environmental law now has an anaemic impact on certain investments in projects, there is no legal requirement for an impact report on people of the Union or State government8217;s economic planning. Accordingly no ruling politician or administrator of industrial, agricultural, commerce or finance or planning departments of governance has been held liable for ignoring the directive principles on the use of resources, the raising of the level of nutrition and the prevention of disease which are legally among the 8220;primary duties8221; of the State.
The economic for-ces let loose by the State after deliberate and conscious planning without a thought of their impact in terms of creation of slums, squalor and disease remain legally unaccountable under a Constitution which has social, economic and political justice as its golden thread.
The absence of a judgment from the apex court linking ruling politicians to a socio-economic impact report of every irrigation, industrial, construction or services project has taken the highest court into two legal routes. One is that of public interest litigation under Article 21 of the Constitution. The other is of using directive principles to interpret fundamental rights or convert the principles into fundamental rights themselves. This is how clean air, clean water, clean cities, primary education, housing, safe drugs and blood have been declared fundamental rights. But in the absence of a public reporting requirement of the socio-economic planning done with public funds, these fundamental rights remain illusory. The apex court then despairs at the persistent non-implementation of its judgments.
Hence development creates the base for disease. Leprosy arising from slum conditions becomes a symptom of State violation of the Constitution, judgments of the apex court and the collapse of preventive legal aid. This brings into focus the second aspect of the kind of health market being created 8212; corruption and insurance.
Centrally assisted disease programmes like leprosy and centrally financed medical equipment imports enjoying import duty exemptions to help the poor are identified by the apex court as channels of private profit. The concerned ministries continue regardless of apex court orders as unaccountable as medical superintendents of hospitals and nursing homes for the health of those in their respective areas. This primary aspect too figures nowhere in the ILI programme in the general or specific sections. An effective legal cry for health must aim for the heart of the problem.
