Paper short abstract:

The COVID-19 and the Constitution resource was conceptualized by C-HELP and designed by Justice Adda. We aim to highlight how and why it's important to center rights in pandemic control and why such visualisation helps to attune law and policy responses to people’s lives.

Paper long abstract:

The COVID-19 and the Constitution resource was conceptualized by the Centre for Health Equity, Law & Policy in the bewildering and unprecedented summer of 2020. Finding ourselves suddenly marooned in our homes but buffeted by sweeping law and policy directives that wrought alarming changes in our lives, we sought to document the outpouring of these regulations and laws. Our attempt was to bring a sense of order into the chaos of the pandemic and its law and policy response. We aimed to demonstrate how these policy and law responses aligned with India’s Constitutional obligations enshrined in the fundamental rights, the litmus test for justifiable legislation, and the ways in which the pandemic also produced a series of regulatory excesses. We also sought to present more bottom-up narratives of the ways in which people were impacted by the pandemic and the response or lack thereof. Through our “Stories of COVID-19”, designed by Justice Adda, we aimed to bring forth the material consequences that the pandemic has had on people’s lives across India.

Through our presentation, we seek to highlight the importance of centering rights in pandemic control and management, how we went about visualizing this for the project, and why such visualisation is important to relate law and policy responses that are attuned to people’s lives. We will explicate the philosophy underlying the project, who would benefit from the resource, and the lessons it may offer for building responses that are grounded in fundamental rights, to health challenges present and future.