All ten questions from the NCERT textbook Indian Constitution at Work, Chapter 2, “Rights in the Indian Constitution”, exactly as they appear in the book, with a full model answer for each. Try answering first yourself, then check against this.
1 True or false
Q. Write true or false against each of these statements:
(a) A Bill of Rights lays down the rights enjoyed by the people of a country.
(b) A Bill of Rights protects the liberties of an individual.
(c) Every country of the world has a Bill of Rights.
(d) The Constitution guarantees remedy against violation of Rights.
Answer:
(a) True. A Bill of Rights is exactly this: the list of rights a constitution mentions and protects for the people of that country.
(b) True. Protecting individual liberty, along with equality, is the whole point of having a Bill of Rights.
(c) False. Not every country has a written Bill of Rights; some democracies protect rights through convention and ordinary law instead.
(d) True. The Right to Constitutional Remedies lets a citizen approach a High Court or the Supreme Court to have any violated Fundamental Right restored.
2 Best description of Fundamental Rights
Q. Which of the following is the best description of Fundamental Rights?
(a) All the rights an individual should have.
(b) All the rights given to citizens by law.
(c) The rights given and protected by the Constitution.
(d) The rights given by the Constitution that cannot ever be restricted.
Answer: (c). Fundamental Rights are specifically the rights the Constitution itself lists and protects. Option (a) is too broad, since not every right a person “should” have is a Fundamental Right. Option (b) describes ordinary legal rights, which can be changed by ordinary law, not Fundamental Rights, which can only be changed by amending the Constitution. Option (d) is wrong because Fundamental Rights are not absolute: the government can place reasonable restrictions on them.
3 Which right is used or violated
Q. Read the following situations. Which Fundamental Right is being used or violated in each case and how?
(a) Overweight male cabin crew are allowed to get promotion in the national airlines but their women colleagues who gain weight are penalised.
(b) A director makes a documentary film that criticises the policies of the government.
(c) People displaced by a big dam take out a rally demanding rehabilitation.
(d) Andhra society runs Telugu medium schools outside Andhra Pradesh.
Answer:
(a) This violates the Right to Equality, specifically prohibition of discrimination on the ground of sex. Penalising only women employees for a rule applied leniently to men is exactly the kind of unequal treatment this right exists to stop.
(b) This is a legitimate use of the Right to Freedom, specifically freedom of speech and expression. Criticising government policy through a documentary is a form of expression the Constitution protects, subject only to reasonable restrictions like public order.
(c) This is a legitimate use of the Right to Freedom, specifically the freedom to assemble peacefully. A rally demanding rehabilitation is a peaceful protest, which the Constitution protects as long as it stays peaceful and unarmed.
(d) This is a legitimate use of the Cultural and Educational Rights. A linguistic community (Telugu speakers, a minority outside Andhra Pradesh) has the right to conserve its language and set up its own educational institutions to teach it.
4 Correct interpretation of Cultural and Educational Rights
Q. Which of the following is a correct interpretation of the Cultural and Educational Rights?
(a) Only children belonging to the minority group that has opened educational institution can study there.
(b) Government schools must ensure that children of the minority group will be introduced to their belief and culture.
(c) Linguistic and religious minorities can open schools for their children and keep it reserved for them.
(d) Linguistic and religious minorities can demand that their children must not study in any educational institution except those managed by their own community.
Answer: (c). Cultural and Educational Rights allow linguistic and religious minorities to set up their own educational institutions to preserve their language and culture. Option (a) is wrong because a minority-run institution is not restricted only to its own community’s children. Option (b) is wrong because the Constitution requires state institutions to stay neutral on religion, not actively teach a minority’s beliefs. Option (d) is wrong because minorities have the right to open their own schools, not the right to force their children out of every other kind of institution.
5 Violation and why
Q. Which of the following is a violation of Fundamental Rights and why?
(a) Not paying minimum wages
(b) Banning of a book
(c) Banning of loudspeakers after 9 pm.
(d) Making a speech
Answer:
(a) Violation. Paying below the minimum wage amounts to begar or forced labour, which violates the Right against Exploitation, exactly as in the Asian Games construction-workers case in this chapter.
(b) Depends on the reason. Banning a book is a violation of the Right to Freedom (freedom of speech and expression) unless it is done under a reasonable restriction, such as protecting public order or morality; an unreasonable, arbitrary ban would be a violation.
(c) Not a violation. This is a reasonable restriction on the freedom of speech and expression, imposed in the interest of public order and the peace of other residents at night, which the Constitution explicitly allows.
(d) Not a violation. Making a speech is itself the exercise of the Right to Freedom (freedom of speech and expression), not a violation of anyone’s right, unless its actual content breaks a reasonable restriction like inciting violence.
6 Do the poor need Fundamental Rights or Directive Principles?
Q. An activist working among the poor says that the poor don’t need Fundamental Rights. What they need are Directive Principles to be made legally binding. Do you agree with this? Give your reasons.
Answer: Not entirely. It is true that a Directive Principle like the right to work, if made legally binding, would change a poor person’s life more directly and immediately than an abstract legal guarantee. But Fundamental Rights are not useless to the poor either: the Asian Games workers’ case in this very chapter shows that once their Right against Exploitation was challenged in court, they actually got the wages owed to them. Many Directive Principles, such as the right to education, panchayati raj and the mid-day meal scheme, have already been implemented through ordinary law and political pressure, without needing to be made justiciable. A balanced view is that the poor need both: Fundamental Rights that stop them from being directly exploited, and Directive Principles that push governments toward welfare measures over time.
7 Scavenging castes forced into the same job
Q. Several reports show that caste groups previously associated with scavenging are forced to continue in this job. Those in positions of authority refuse to give them any other job. Their children are discouraged from pursuing education. Which of their Fundamental Rights are being violated in this instance?
Answer: This involves violations of more than one Fundamental Right. First, the Right to Equality is violated: refusing people any other job purely because of their caste is exactly the kind of caste-based discrimination this right bans, and it is closely tied to the abolition of untouchability. Second, the Right against Exploitation is violated if they are compelled into this work against their will, since forced or degrading labour tied to caste is a form of exploitation the Constitution prohibits. Third, discouraging their children from education violates the Right to Education, and also undermines the Right to Equality of opportunity, since it keeps the next generation trapped in the same position.
8 Starvation and the Food Corporation of India
Q. A petition by a human rights group drew attention of the court to the condition of starvation and hunger in the country. Over five crore tonnes of food grains was stored in the godowns of the Food Corporation of India. Research shows that a large number of ration cardholders do not know about the quantity of food grains they can purchase from fair price shops. It requested the court to order the government to improve its public distribution system.
a. Which different rights does this case involve? How are these rights interlinked?
b. Should these rights form part of the right to life?
Answer:
a. This case involves the Right to Constitutional Remedies (the group petitioning the court), the right to information (ration cardholders not knowing their entitlements), and, implicitly, a right to food. These are interlinked because the right to information is what makes the other rights usable in practice: a ration cardholder who does not know their entitlement cannot claim it, so their right to adequate food is denied not by lack of grain (there is plenty stored), but by lack of access to information and a functioning distribution system, and the court’s power to order a remedy is what can connect all three.
b. Yes. The Supreme Court has already expanded the right to life under Article 21 to include the right to shelter and livelihood, on the reasoning that no person can truly live without the means of living. Access to adequate food follows the same logic exactly: a person cannot live with dignity, or at all, without enough food, so a right against starvation is a natural extension of the right to life the courts have already recognised.
9 Somnath Lahiri’s statement
Q. Read the statement by Somnath Lahiri in the Constituent Assembly quoted in this chapter. Do you agree with him? If yes, give instances to prove it. If not, give arguments against his position.
Answer: A balanced answer neither fully agrees nor fully disagrees. Lahiri argued that Fundamental Rights were framed from a police constable’s point of view, with very minimum rights conceded and almost every article followed by a proviso that took the right away. There is real evidence for this: the right to freedom of speech is restricted by public order and morality, the right to assemble can be denied by declaring a gathering of five or more unlawful, and preventive detention lets the government hold a person without trial for up to three months, a power the chapter itself notes has often been misused against ordinary critics rather than genuine threats. But the opposite argument also has force: an unrestricted right would let one person’s freedom threaten everyone else’s, which is exactly why the chapter defines freedom as something that must be exercised without endangering others’ freedom or the law and order situation. So the fairer conclusion is that Lahiri was right that the restrictions were extensive and open to misuse, but not right that they made the rights meaningless: the Right to Constitutional Remedies and decades of judicial interpretation since 1950 have repeatedly widened rights rather than let restrictions swallow them.
10 The most important Fundamental Right
Q. Which of the Fundamental Rights is in your opinion the most important right? Summarise its provisions and give arguments to show why it is most important.
Answer: The Right to Constitutional Remedies (Article 32) has the strongest claim, and Dr. Ambedkar himself called it the “heart and soul of the Constitution”. It lets a citizen approach the High Court or the Supreme Court directly whenever any Fundamental Right is violated, and the court can issue any of five writs, Habeas Corpus, Mandamus, Prohibition, Quo Warranto and Certiorari, to enforce it. It matters most because every other Fundamental Right depends on it for its actual force: Machal Lalung’s 54 years in custody show exactly what happens to a right that exists on paper but cannot be enforced, while the Asian Games workers’ case shows what happens when a right can be enforced. Every other Fundamental Right protects against one particular kind of harm; this one protects the ability to make all the others real, which is why losing it would matter more than losing any single right on the list.