PARAGRAPH,WORDS AND MEANINGS

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Topic of the day:-“Two Key Points”

While this claim may seem provocative, it is based on a reading of the privacy judgment. First, it expressly stated the primacy of the individual as the beneficiary of fundamental rights. Second, it rejected the argument that the right to privacy dissolves in the face of amorphous collective notions of economic development. The priorities of the Srikrishna committee stray from these two basic points. Its report, titled “A Free and Fair Digital Economy: Protecting Privacy, Empowering Indians”, keeps to the apparent pecking order that its title signals: the common good and the economy come first and individuals second. In justifying this framework, the report runs into tremendous difficulties as it attempts to put together a regulatory agenda that reconciles the expansion of the digital economy and state control with the principles of the right to privacy judgment.

These difficulties reveal themselves in a misunderstanding of the fundamentals of constitutional law. These are made all the more difficult to follow by the heavy use of jargon and a reliance on foreign and academic authorities, which are often cited without proper context. The trouble begins with the report’s conception of the state. The state’s purpose under the Constitution, says the report, is “based on two planks”. First and foremost, “the state is a facilitator of human progress” and is “commanded” by the Directive Principles of State Policy “to serve the common good”. Here, Fundamental Rights, which help protect against a state “prone to excess”, come “second”. This ignores the very structure of the Constitution in which the chapter guaranteeing enforceable Fundamental Rights stands on its own, preceding the one setting out unenforceable Directive Principles of State Policy.

In doing the so, the report attempts to open the right to privacy to allow the state the most convenient means by which to realise its regulatory agenda. Enabling the government’s convenience is not an objective laid out by the right to privacy judgment. Constitutional guarantees of rights do not automatically bend even to the pursuit of constitutionally legitimate aims. Instead, a rigorous three-part test set out in the right to privacy judgment makes clear that it is for the government to measure and justify its actions at every point that it seeks to make inroads into our privacy.

To justify its priorities, the report proceeds on the premise that upends the historical consensus of what Constitutions and rights exist to do: protect every citizen of the republic against incursions into the vast repository of freedoms that exist naturally. The report says that “to see the individual as an atomised unit, standing apart from the collective, neither flows from our constitutional framework nor accurately grasps the true nature of rights litigations. Rights (of which the right to privacy is an example) are not deontological categories that protect interests of atomised individuals.” Then, it proceeds to conclude, “Thus the construction of a right itself is not because it translates into an individual good, be it autonomy, speech, etc. but because such good creates a collective culture where certain reasons for state action are unacceptable.” Much of this language is inscrutable to even the legally trained mind.

To the extent that its import can be made out, the argument seems to be a strained, convoluted and ultimately unconvincing attempt to re-litigate the case of the government in the right to privacy issue. To the report’s view that the individual ought not to be the spotlighted while making a law, the right to privacy judgment is in stark contrast. In Justice S.A. Bobde’s words, “Constitutions like our own are means by which individuals – the Preambular ‘people of India’ – create ‘the state’, a new entity to serve their interests and be accountable to them.” Moreover, in Justice Chandrachud’s words: “The individual is the focal point of the Constitution because it is in the realisation of individual rights that the collective well being of the community is determined.”

MEANINGS AND WORDS

1) Reminisce

Meaning: Indulge in enjoyable recollection of past events.

Example: “They reminisced about their summers abroad”

Synonyms: Recall, Recollect

2) Nostalgia

Meaning: A sentimental longing or wistful affection for a period in the past.

Example: “I was overcome with acute nostalgia for my days at university”

Synonyms: Remembrance, Recollection

3) Unanimous

Meaning: (Of an opinion, decision, or vote) held or carried by everyone involved.

Example: “This requires the unanimous approval of all member states”

Synonyms: Uniform, Consistent

4) Ambit

Meaning: The scope, extent, or bounds of something.

Example: “A full discussion of this complex issue was beyond the ambit of one book”

5) Provocative

Meaning: Causing anger or another strong reaction, especially deliberately.

Example: “A provocative article”

Synonyms: Annoying, Irritating

Antonyms: Soothing, Calming

6) Primacy

Meaning: The fact of being pre-eminent or most important.

Example: “London’s primacy as a financial centre”

Synonyms: Priority, Precedence

7) Amorphous

Meaning: Without a clearly defined shape or form.

Example: “An amorphous, characterless conurbation”

Synonyms: Shapeless, Unformed

Antonyms: Shaped, Definite

8) Notions

Meaning: A conception of or belief about something.

Example: “Children have different notions about the roles of their parents”

Synonyms: Idea, Belief

9) Pecking order

Meaning: An informal social system in which some people or groups know they are more or less important than others.

Example: “There’s a clearly established pecking order in this office”

10) Tremendous

Meaning: Very great in amount, scale, or intensity.

Example: “Penny put in a tremendous amount of time”

Synonyms: Huge, Enormous

Antonyms: Tiny, Slight

11) Agenda

Meaning: A plan of things to be done or problems to be addressed.

Example: “He vowed to put jobs at the top of his agenda”

Synonyms: Schedule, Programme

12) Reconciles

Meaning: To find a way in which two situations or beliefs that are opposed to each other can agree and exist together.

Example: “It’s difficult to reconcile such different points of view”

13) Jargon

Meaning: Special words or expressions used by a profession or group that are difficult for others to understand.

Example: “Legal jargon”

Synonyms: Cant, Argot

14) Planks

Meaning: A fundamental point of a political or other programme.

Example: “The central plank of the bill is the curb on industrial polluters”

15) Prone

Meaning: Likely or liable to suffer from, do, or experience something unpleasant or regrettable.

Example: “Farmed fish are prone to disease”

Synonyms: Susceptible, Liable

Antonyms: Resistant, Vulnerable

16) Pursuit

Meaning: An activity that you spend time doing, usually when you are not working.

Example: “I enjoy outdoor pursuits, like hiking and riding”

17) Rigorous

Meaning: Extremely thorough and careful.

Example: “The rigorous testing of consumer products”

Synonyms: Meticulous, Punctilious

Antonyms: Slapdash

18) Inroads

Meaning: An instance of something being encroached on or reduced by something else.

Example: “The firm is beginning to make inroads into the UK market”

19) Premise

Meaning: A previous statement or proposition from which another is inferred or follows as a conclusion.

Example: “If the premise is true, then the conclusion must be true”

20) Upends

Meaning: Set or turn (something) on its end or upside down.

Example: “She upended a can of soup over the portions”