Editorial Simplified – A Fundamental Error [ GS 2 ]


A FUNDAMENTAL ERROR


Why has this issue cropped up?

August 24 will mark the first anniversary of the affirmation of the right to privacy the Supreme Court. Hence, few days before it i.e., today, this article has been published.

What had Court said in its judgement?

The court imposed upon the government an obligation to make a law safeguarding a person’s informational privacy, commonly referred to as data protection.

What were the main provisions of the Supreme Court judgement?

  1. It stated the primacy of the individual as the beneficiary of fundamental rights.
  2. It rejected the argument that the right to privacy dissolves in the face of collective notions of economic development.

 

The Personal Data Protection Bill, 2018

The Union government had tasked a committee headed by Justice B.N. Srikrishna to formulate such a law in July last year. This committee has made recommendations and produced a draft law titled the “The Personal Data Protection Bill, 2018”

 

Problem with Srikrishna Committee Recommendations

The recommendations do not only undermine the legal principles within it but also re-interpret them.

 

How the Srikrishna Committee recommendations do not comply with Supreme Court judgement and hence with the Constitution?

  • The committee gives primacy to Directive Principles over the Fundamental Rights. This ignores the very structure of the Constitution in which the chapter guaranteeing enforceable Fundamental Rights precedes the Directive Principles of State Policy. In doing so, the report allows the state the most convenient means by which it can realise its regulatory agenda but this is not an objective laid out by the right to privacy judgment.
  • The report says that to see the individual as an atomised unit, standing apart from the collective, does not flow from our constitutional framework. This again goes against the historical consensus of what Constitutions and rights exist to do: protect every citizen of the republic against incursions into the freedoms that exist naturally.
  • By re-framing and re-interpreting the right to privacy, the report entrenches the positions of the two entities which already wield the most power over ordinary Indians: corporations and the government.

Conclusion

Our fundamental rights, whether to speech, equality or practice our religion or profession, are all essential facets that make life worth living and are held up by the right to privacy with regard to information about us. In stating that rights are not things which are essential in themselves is an unacceptable position to take under our Constitution.


Leave a Reply