Jayna Kothari has contributed a chapter titled ‘Social Rights Litigation in India: Developments in the Last Decade’, in Daphne Barak-Erez and Aeyal M. Gross (eds.), Exploring Social Rights: Between Theory and Practice (Hart Publishing, 2007).
The chapter brings to light the growing importance of economic and social rights as a part of Article 21 of the Indian Constitution. In examining the protection of social rights in India, this chapter analyses the role of litigation as a new strategy to fulfill the social rights laid down in the Indian Constitution focusing specifically on the right to housing, food and education cases over the last decade. The aim is to shed light on what has been achieved through social rights litigation and to extract some insights into the potential and limits of litigation as a strategy for advancing social rights.