What are public facilities?

 

Water as Part of the Fundamental Right to Life

 

Water is essential for life and for good health. Not only is it necessary for us to be able to meet our daily needs but safe drinking water can prevent many water-related diseases. India has one of the largest numbers of cases of diseases such as diarrhea, dysentery, cholera. Over 1,600 Indians, most of them children below the age of five, reportedly die every day because of water-related diseases.

 

These deaths can be prevented if people have access to safe drinking water. The Constitution of India recognizes the right to water as being a part of the Right to Life under Article 21. This means that it is the right of every person, whether rich or poor, to have sufficient amounts of water to fulfill his/her daily needs at a price that he/she can afford.

 

In other words, there should be universal access to water. There have been several court cases in which both the High Courts and the Supreme Court have held that the right to safe drinking water is a Fundamental Right. More recently, in 2007, the Andhra Pradesh High Court restated this while hearing a case based on a letter written by a villager of Mahbubnagar district on the contamination of drinking water.

 

The villager�s complaint was that a textile company was discharging poisonous chemicals into a stream near his village, contaminating groundwater, which was the source for irrigation and drinking water. The judges directed the Mahbubnagar district collector to supply 25 liters of water to each person in the village

 

Like water, there are other essential facilities that need to be provided for everyone. Last academic session, you have read about two other such facilities: healthcare and sanitation. Similarly, there are things like electricity, public transport, schools and colleges that are also necessary. These are known as public facilities.

 

The important characteristic of a public facility is that once it is provided, its benefits can be shared by many people.

 

For instance, a school in the village will enable many children to get educated. Similarly, the supply of electricity to an area can be useful for many people: farmers can run pump sets to irrigate their fields, people can open small workshops that run on electricity, students will find it easier to study and most people in the village will benefit in some way or the other.

 

The Government�s Role

 

Given that public facilities are so important, someone must carry the responsibility of providing these to the people. This �someone is the government. One of the most important functions of the government is to ensure that these public facilities are made available to everyone. Let us try and understand why the government (and only the government) must bear this responsibility.

 

We have seen that private companies operate for profit in the market. You read about this in the chapter on the �Story of a Shirt� in your Class VII book.

 

In most of the public facilities, there is no profit to be had. For example, what profit can accrue to a company for keeping the roads clean or running an anti-malaria campaign?

 

A private company will probably not be interested in undertaking such work. But, for other public facilities such as schools and hospitals, private companies may well be interested.

 

We have many of these, particularly in large cities. Similarly, if you are living in a city, you will have seen private companies supplying water through tankers or supplying drinking water in sealed bottles. In such cases, private companies provide public facilities but at a price that only some people can afford.

 

Hence, this facility is not available to all at an affordable rate. If we go by the rule that people will get as much as they can pay for then many people who cannot afford to pay for such facilities will be deprived of the opportunity to live a decent life. Clearly, this is not a desirable option. Public facilities relate to people�s basic needs. Any modern society requires that these facilities are provided so that people�s basic needs are met.

 

The Right to Life that the Constitution guarantees is for all persons living in this country. The responsibility to provide public facilities, therefore, must be that of the government

 

Now the question arises, where does the government get money for public facilities? Every year you must have heard the government budget is presented in the Parliament. This is an account of the expenses the government has made on its programs in the past year and how much it plans to spend in the coming year. In the budget, the government also announces the various ways in which it plans to meet these expenses.

 

The main source of revenue for the government is the taxes collected from the people, and the government is empowered to collect these taxes and use them for such programs.

 

For instance, to supply water, the government has to incur costs in pumping water, carrying it over long distances, laying down pipes for distribution, treating the water for impurities, and finally, collecting and treating wastewater.

 

It meets these expenses partly from the various taxes that it collects and partly by charging a price for water. This price is set so that most people can afford a certain minimum amount of water for daily use.

 

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