Human Rights and Basic Needs - Theory and Practice

Human rights have a projection of universality, but as a matter of ground reality they are not the same for all people and societies. It is in this scenario that a few scholars from the West and from Asia decided to sit together and exchange views on their understanding of human rights issues and their subject matter.

About the Author:

Mahendra Pal Singh (born 15 July 1940), popularly known as M.P. Singh, is a constitutional law scholar of India. He is best known amongst students of Constitution of India for being the revising author of V.N. Shukla's Constitution of India a standard textbook for lawyers on Constitution of India. Internationally however, he is more famous amongst scholars of comparative constitutional law and comparative administrative law for his work, German Administrative Law in Common Law Perspective.

Professor Singh has laid especial emphasis in making legal education more meaningful to Indian society by making the top law schools more accessible to the students from less privileged background. At NUJS, and since, he has been leading an effort called IDIA, or 'Increasing Diversity by Increasing Access', which involves an engagement with school going children from different parts of semi-urban and rural India and to encourage and help them enter the top law schools of the country. Towards the same end, he has also been heading a group of academicians, called the Legal Education and Research Society or 'LEARS' as it is popularly referred to. He has also been running a school in his village Jitholi for the children of the nearby places. Students from NUJS and volunteers from IDIA have often visited and interacted with the kids of this school