Article 21 and 21A — Right to Life and Personal Liberty & Right to Education

Every monsoon, Mumbai's pavement dwellers are told their huts will be pulled down. A family asks: if you take our shelter, you take our work, and without work we cannot live. Is that a constitutional question? And a nine-year-old in a municipal school asks for a seat in a private school near her home. Is education a right, or a favour? Article 21, only twenty-one words in the original, has been read by the Supreme Court to answer both, and Article 21A now speaks directly to the child.

In two minutes

Article 21 says no person shall be deprived of life or personal liberty except according to procedure established by law; since Maneka Gandhi (1978) that procedure must be fair, just and reasonable, and the article has grown to include livelihood, privacy, health, dignity and more, while Article 21A gives every child aged six to fourteen a right to free and compulsory education.

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