Public Interest Litigation and Grievance Redressal: Combining ‘Macromanagement’ and ‘Micromanagement’ for Effective Socio-Economic Rights Adjudication

Abstract

AbstractDuring its tenure from 2004 to 2014, the UPA government introduced several pieces of legislation promising a multitude of services to Indian citizens as ‘rights’. While the wording of ‘rights’ has a very positive ring to it, merely formulating such rights or entitlements does not lead to tangible results in practice. As these rights are based on fundamental rights, either explicitly or implicitly (through extensive reading of the right to life) guaranteed by the Indian Constitution, they must also be enforceable in India’s courts in practice. Otherwise, they remain ‘rights’ only on paper. Unfortunately, the Indian higher judiciary is virtually inaccessible for those parts of the society that these rights are actually aimed at. However, the rights legislations of the first two decades of the 2000s do provide alternative means of enforcement, called grievance redressal mechanisms. This article examines these mechanisms and argues that decisive structural changes need to be made to make them effective, and that the judiciary could help in making these changes through Public Interest Litigation. Having functioning grievance redressal mechanisms ‘at the bottom’ and the high courts and the Supreme Court ‘at the top’ could then allow a system of ‘micromanagement’ and ‘macromanagement’ at the two levels that has decisive benefits for socio-economic rights adjudication, both in India and elsewhere.