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Research Proposal


THE DISENFRANCHISED PEOPLE WITH THE STREETS AS HOME: A STUDY ON THE
RIGHT TO HOUSING NOT BEING SPECIFICALLY RECOGNISED





By : Ravi Bundela,
01 PHD 2012







NATIONAL LAW UNIVERSITY, DELHI




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PhD Proposal
1. Title: THE DISENFRANCHISED PEOPLE WITH THE STREETS AS HOME: A STUDY ON THE RIGHT
TO HOUSING NOT BEING RECOGNISED

2. The Objective:
Ours is a world in which events as disparate and seemingly unrelated as war, natural disaster,
city regeneration, mortgage repossession, international sport and rural development schemes
render many millions homeless each year. These upheavals displace great waves of people across
international borders, and millions within their own states. Ours is a world in which the most
prosperous states have homeless populations in the hundreds of thousands and where more than
one billion people-one in three urban dwellers- are crowded into informal settlements on the
margins of economic and political life.
In such a harsh world, what role can a human right as nebulous, contested (even decided)
as the right to housing, play? When the schemes like NREGA (National Rural Employment
Guarantee Act, for India) gives money to eat at least, but can there be anything which can
guarantee a basic home in which one can have secured life. It is this question which motivates
The right to housing: Law, Concepts, Possibilities.
The question first began to gnaw its way into my consciousness during my experience
especially in Indias metropolitan cities like worst are Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai. It
continued to haunt me as and when I see persons, individual, families dwelling on roads,
footpaths, and pavements especially in severe winter (cold) and smashing summer (hot) the
situation are worse than slum dwellers, because here is no roof and life is fully insecure. The
question is still unanswered and becomes more complicated that does the right to housing
indeed have a role to play in our struggle to for social transformation through human rights.
The human right to housing represents the laws most direct and overt protection of
housing and home. Unlike other human rights, through which the home incidentally receives
protection and attention, the right to housing itself to the position of primary importance. It is to
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see why the homeless, the inadequately housed and the forcibly displaced would turn to the
language of human rights to articulate the hurt they have experienced. However, despite the
fundamental importance of safe and secure housing to a fulfilled human existence, questions
about why we should protect housing as human right, and what such a human right should
look like remain unanswered in law, theory and practice. Housing provides and protects some of
the most fundamental human needs. Safe and secure housing shields us from the elements and
provides refuge from external physical threats. It gives us a material base from which to build a
livelihood and take part in the life of the community and the state. But housing also provide a
space in which our psychological needs can be met. Secure housing is both intrinsically and
instrumentally important in the formation and protection of community, belonging and place in
the world. Those whose housing is in adequate, who are forced from their homes, and who aer
homeless suffer severe personal and social deprivations with both psychological and material
impacts.
In the light of this background, the aim of my proposed work is:
To seek comprehensive definition of a house, to answer a question what si housing, and
in which circumstances should we protect it as a human right? Where necessary or useful,
a specific definition is invoked for a particular argument.
To analyze the scope, content and meaning of the right to housing as interpreted in the
international and regional regimes of human rights law, and in key national constitutions.







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3. Conceptual Context:
The UDHR of Human Rights, and the two international covenants in which its principles were
translated into law, are the customary starting point for any examination of international human
rights. The international covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) and the
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights are the most widely ratified and
comprehensive of international human rights documents. In addition, the documents have
become the standard against which other human rights protections are measured. They are thus
not only conventional, but logical, places to begin a human rights analysis.
With specific regard to right to housing, the International Bill of Rights is often
considered as containing the seed from which other provisions on the right to housing have
grown. The concept of freedom from want in the preamble to the UDHR germinated into the
seedling that is the right to an adequate standard of living in article 25 of the UDHRand article
11(1) of the ICESCR. Whether the seedling has flourished, and in which directions it has grown,
is the subject matter.
4. Literature Review:
Some Perplexing Issues:
The one thing that all the above mentioned contributors have overlooked is to take poverty or
homelessness from the angle that the right of the poor (homeless) to demand from the society
just as much as he gives to society. All the authors give poor people a different status of
vulnerable that also separated these (homeless) from the normal society and increase the
disparity or inequality. Because if the poor is treated at par with the rich with approach of just
acknowledging the right of the any individual to demand from the society than we dont have to
give poor a different status, simply it is societys duty to fulfill their demand.
As Amartya Sens capability approach is quite convinced that there are many features which
a society can concentrate in assessing justice and injustice. Unlike Bentham, Sen emphasizes
more on a persons capability to do things he or she may value doing or being. Which means
according to Sen just to make individual capable by giving them free health services, free
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education analysis, to be main criteria of human success? Focus has nowhere in Sens theory on
how it can be done, nowhere it has mentioned the a special legislation is required in doing that.
Economist Philippe Van Parijis has a simple plan for addressing not only poverty but
other social ills: everyone would be paid a universal basic income (UBI) as a level sufficient for
subsistence. Van Parijis argues that a UBI would reduce unemployment, improve womens lives,
and prevent the environmental damage caused by overproduction and fast growth. This looks
good when he talk to give UBI to all even those who dont make any social contribution. But it
may not be viable solution.
Hana Arendt examine the significance and limits of nationality, citizenship, humanity
and politics for right bearing, and argues that their complex interrelation points to how the
right to have roghts might be rearticulated for the purposes of international legal thought and
practice.

Limitations of Research: the scholar is limiting the research in recognizing
homelessness and its causes and the states response to it.
5. Research Question
Why we should protect housing as a human right, and what such a human right should look like
in law, practice & theory? Whether the right to housing specifically recognized or not?