Property Rights

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Transcript

Property rights are established to grant the legal right to use, lease, sell or transfer property. The right to property is seen as the fundamental tenet of the market economy. Property rights were always controversial. Though property rights are rarely abolished in any society, for much of human history and even today, people do not have an absolute right to property. But, there is growing agreement among legal philosophers and economists that property rights are human rights. Organizations like the World Bank and the the Heritage Foundation rank countries according to the the extent to which countries protect private property and the extent to which they enforce such laws. Countries which have the strongest property rights are almost always the most prosperous ones. According to the original constitution of India, right to property was a fundamental right. But, many provisions were added to this over decades, and now people have absolute right to their property, except when they are deprived of it by the authority of law. In the recent past, there were unsuccessful attempts to make property a fundamental right. For instance, in 2010, the Supreme Court rejected a PIL to re-institute the right to property as a fundamental right.