Q.Compare South African Bill of Rights main points with India's Directive Principles — common points? Why did SA include these in Bill of Rights? What would you suggest for a new country's constitution?

Comparing South Africa's Bill of Rights with India's Directive Principles highlights a key

constitutional design choice -- whether social and economic guarantees should be enforceable rights …

The common points are substantial: both documents commit the state to securing adequate housing,

health care, sufficient food and water, social security and assistance for those in need, and the

protection of the environment. Both also reflect a recognition that political and civil liberties

alone -- the vote, free speech, equality before the law -- are not sufficient for a genuinely just

society if large sections of the population remain without their basic material needs met.

South Africa chose to write these as directly enforceable rights, most plausibly because its 1996

Constitution was drafted in the immediate aftermath of apartheid, a system that had deliberately and

systematically denied housing, land, and basic services to the Black majority; the drafters likely

wanted these guarantees to carry the full force of a court order rather than depend on whichever

government happened to be in power to choose to act on them, given how recently and severely these

needs had been denied. India's Constitution, drafted in 1950 at a moment of severe resource scarcity

and just after independence, instead chose the Directive Principles model -- treating these goals as

important but subject to the state's actual economic capacity and legislative priorities over time,

rather than immediately enforceable through the courts.

For a new country writing its own constitution, a reasonable middle path -- learning from both

examples -- would be to keep enforceable civil-political rights (equality, speech, liberty, fair

trial) as directly justiciable Fundamental Rights, as India does, while also making at least a CORE …