INTRODUCTION ACCESS TO GOOD QUALITY OF AIR
AIR : India’s constitution is a live, breathing document that changes and expands with time. The constitution’s particular environmental protection measures are a direct outcome of the basic law of the land’s dynamic nature and room for expansion. Our constitution’s preamble guarantees both human dignity and a socialist social structure. This comes with a decent level of life and a clean environment.
“Environment includes water, air, and land and the interrelationship which exists among and between air, water, and land and human beings, other living creatures, plants, micro-organisms, and property,” according to the Environment (Protection) Act of 1986. Every citizen of India is obligated to conserve the environment, as stated in the Indian Constitution’s chapter on basic obligations.
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“Every Indian citizen shall have the duty to protect and improve the natural environment, including forests, lakes, rivers, and wild life, and to have compassion for living creatures,” states Article 51-A (g). The Indian Constitution’s Directive Principles are geared at the creation of welfare states. Another component of the welfare state is a healthy environment.
According to Article 47, the State’s main responsibilities include improving public health, boosting the standard of life and nourishment of its citizens, and raising the level of nutrition. The Directive principles of State Policy (Article 48-A) and Fundamental Duties (Article 51-A) under the Constitution of India explicitly announced the national commitment to protect and improve environment and preserve air quality. Nowadays through judicial interpretations, the right to clean air has been identified as element of right to life under Article 21 of the Constitution.
ARTICLE 21 & QUALITY OF AIR
Article 21 of Indian constitution reads:
“No person shall be deprived of his life or personal liberty except according to a procedure established by law.”1
Article 21 secures two rights:
- Right to life, and
- Right to personal liberty.
- In Francis Coralie Mullin vs The Administrator (1981), Justice P. Bhagwati had said that Article 21 ’embodies a constitutional value of supreme importance in a democratic society’. Further, Justice Iyer characterised Article 21 as ‘the procedural Magna Carta protective of life and liberty’.
The foundation of the Constitution is Article 21. It is the most progressive and organic clause in the Indian Constitution. Only when someone is robbed of their “life or “personal liberty” may they invoke Article 21. Due to its application to natural people as well as citizens, it is also essential to democracy. Everyone has this right, whether they are a citizen or not. So, this privilege can be claimed by a foreigner as well.
Without a question, the most fundamental of all rights is the right to live. All other rights enhance the quality of the life in question and are contingent upon the presence of life in order to function. Given that human rights are exclusive to living things, it seems to reason that the right to life should be paramount since without it, none of the other rights would exist or be useful. If Article 21 had been read in its original context, there would have been no Fundamental Rights worthy of notice.
The “Right to Life” under Article 21 means a life of dignity to live in a proper environment free from the dangers of diseases and infection. Maintenance of health, preservation of the sanitation and environment have been held to fall within the purview of Article 21 as it adversely affects the life of the citizens and it amounts to slow poisoning and reducing the life of the citizens because of the hazards created if not checked.
- In Kharak Singh v. State of Uttar Pradesh,2 the Supreme Court quoted and held:
By the term ‘life’ as here used, something more is meant than mere animal existence. The inhibition against its deprivation extends to all those limbs and faculties by which life is enjoyed. The provision equally prohibits the mutilation of the body by amputation of an armoured leg or the pulling out of an eye, or the destruction of any other organ of the body through which the soul communicates with the outer world.
Dirty air is causing a global public health crisis. Every minute, a child dies of illness caused by air pollution. Every minute, ten adults die, prematurely, because of dirty air inhaled during their lifetime. The total, at least five million deaths annually, is larger than the annual total of deaths caused by war, murder, car accidents, plane crashes, malaria, tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, and Ebola combined.
Over ninety percent of the world’s population lives in regions where air pollution exceeds World Health Organization standards. The very worst air quality, somewhat surprisingly, is found in homes where solid fuels are used for cooking and heating. Women and children in particular are exposed to air pollution in the supposed safety of their own homes at levels far higher than found in even the world’s most smog-ravaged cities.
The scientific evidence about the impacts of air pollution on human health is unequivocal. Breathing dirty air causes respiratory illness, heart disease, stroke, lung cancer, negative birth outcomes, and a range of other problems.
The economic costs inflicted by poor air quality, especially in low and middle-income countries are enormous. Children missing school, adults missing work, health care costs and the value of lives lost add up to trillions of dollars annually.
Air pollution is preventable through the application of strong policies and investments in clean technologies.
For decades, governments have treated air pollution as an environmental issue. Recently it has started being treated as a health issue. Both of these approaches identify cleaner air as a policy goal. But policy goals are inadequate because they are undermined by flexibility, discretion, and the absence of accountability.
However, air pollution is also a human rights issue. Air pollution on today’s scale clearly violates the rights to life and health, the rights of the child, and the right to live in a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment.
The human rights perspective changes everything, because governments have clear, legally enforceable obligations to respect, protect, and fulfil human rights.
Clean air and clean water are both essential to human health and well-being.
Clean air is not an optional policy objective. It’s a fundamental human right.
Everyone needs to breathe clean air. That billions of people today are breathing dirty, deadly air constitutes a global health, environmental and human rights crisis. The solutions are known and simply need to be implemented. Not only do we have an extraordinary opportunity to save tens of millions of lives in the decades ahead by reducing air pollution, we have a moral and legal obligation to do so.
SUPREME COURT ON QUALITY OF AIR
For better or worse, the Supreme Court has decided to interpret the right to life more broadly than was originally intended. The State is now required under the Supreme Court’s right to life reasoning to ensure that its residents have a clean environment, a place to live, a liveable wage, and most importantly, a life of dignity.
- In Murli S. Deora v. Union of India,3 the Court held that persons not indulging in smoking cannot be compelled to or be subjected to passive smoking on account of an act of a smoker. Right to Life under Article 21 is affected as a non-smoker may become a victim of someone smoking in a public place.
- Delhi air pollution case: Vehicular pollution in Delhi: This writ petition was filed in the year of 1985 under Article 21 of the Constitution of India regarding air pollution in Delhi. The Petitioner challenged the inaction on the part of the Union of India, Delhi Administration (Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi) and other Authorities whereby smoke, highly toxic and other corrosive gases were allowed to pass into the air due to which the people of Delhi were put to high risk. During the pendency of this Writ Petition, the Hon’ble Supreme Court passed several orders/ directions to deal with the situations arising from time-to-time and impressed upon the concerned authorities to take urgent steps to tackle the acute problem of vehicular pollution in Delhi on 26.7.1998 which include elimination of leaded petrol, replacement of old autos, taxies and buses, construction of new Interstate Bus Terminus at entry points, along with strengthening the air quality monitoring.
- In Subhas Kumar v. State of Bihar4, it has held that a Public Interest Litigation is maintainable for ensuring enjoyment of pollution-free water and air which is included in ‘right to live’ under Art.21 of the Constitution. The Court observed:
- “Right to live is a fundamental right under Art 21 of the Constitution and it includes the right of enjoyment of pollution free water and air for full enjoyment of life. If anything endangers or impairs that quality of life in derogation of laws, a citizen has right to have recourse to Art.32 of the Constitution for removing the pollution of water or air which may be detrimental to the quality of life.”
CONCLUSION
“If you want to clean up the environment, start with your mind. It starts there.”
The courts’ introduction of environmental consciousness, together with later legislative initiatives, established the right to the environment as a basic right under Article 21 of the Indian Constitution. Through their involvement in and resolution of several environmental protection concerns, Indian courts have been instrumental in progressively expanding the scope of a high quality of life. Each and every citizen owes social duties to the society that he is a part of, his family, his neighbors, and himself. Since life is the essence of mankind, it is consequently the most fundamental of all rights.
It denotes an assertion that one is so alive that existence does not put other people’s existence in danger. Individuals are not the only ones responsible for protecting the environment and ensuring that everyone has the right to live in dignity.
The state is also a major partner in these efforts. Establishing a clear worldwide vision for long-term objectives and developing the international institutions necessary to enable each nation to contribute to the achievement of these objectives are crucial. Economic progress and the environment should coexist peacefully. Only when consumption norms worldwide take long-term sustainability into consideration will living standards beyond the fundamental minimum be sustained.
- https://medium.com/@info.vintagelitigation/article-21-of-the-constitution-of-india-safeguarding-life-and-liberty-0d190997a151 ↩︎
- Kharak SIngh Case https://indiankanoon.org/doc/619152/ ↩︎
- Murli S. Deora vs Union Of India And Ors on 2 November, 2001 https://indiankanoon.org/doc/1495522/ ↩︎
- Subhas Kumar v. State of Bihar https://leap.unep.org/en/countries/in/national-case-law/subhash-kumar-v-state-bihar#:~:text=State%20of%20Bihar,-Data%20source&text=The%20petitioner%20filed%20a%20public,into%20the%20nearby%20Bokaro%20river. ↩︎
