Dignity: Are You Worth It?

20 min readOct 9, 2021

“When an individual is protesting society’s refusal to acknowledge his dignity as a human being, his very act of protest confers dignity on him.” Bayard Rustin, organizer of the March on Washington and Advisor to Martin Luther King Jr.

“Overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity. It is an act of justice. It is the protection of a fundamental human right, the Right to Dignity and a decent life.” Nelson Mandela, Anti-apartheid Leader and President of South Africa

Every morning, hundreds of sweepers take to the streets of Jaipur with shoulder-length grass brooms in their hand. With light, back-hand strokes, they assemble the previous day’s litter — vegetable waste, scraps of paper, plastic shreds, soiled diapers, used sanitary napkins and animal excreta — into tiny stockpiles. These are then shoveled into a handcart by another person and emptied into greenish heavy metal waste bins kept at a distance, with the large but fading inscription of the Jaipur Municipal Corporation placed on them. During the day, a leaky municipal truck show up from which several people descend to disembowel the bins and evacuate the putrefying garbage. Then they proceed to dump it outside the city, into a landfill.

At first, I thought these sweepers keep their faces covered to avoid the dust entering their eyes and noses but later discovered that they were actually doing this to prevent people from seeing them. “It is not a good feeling,” a young boy who worked on the street outside my house once told me. “It is as if everyone is looking at me.”

The Valmiki community, to which most of these sweepers belong, is also engaged in cleaning sewers, unblocking drains and picking up animals' caraccas, and disposing of them. Their work is considered unclean and stigmatizing.

“It is not a pleasant feeling, being called a sweeper, but we have no choice. There are no other jobs available. Even people from upper castes are unable to find any employment,” the boy confided in me. “If these sweepers had an alternative, they will never engage in such degrading work.”

Why are these young sweepers, who can otherwise be capable of working in banks, engineering companies, five-star hotels etc., locked in such degrading work? Obviously, they don’t have alternative jobs, but they also don’t have the means to do anything else too. We have seen government, understandably, fail at providing them employment. But what about providing them the means of livelihood so the young sweepers are free to pursue other professions without having to experience a feeling of shame? So they can retain their dignity?

The answer to the questions above requires a detour into the world of economics. I will touch upon some concepts — value, worth, wealth, scarcity, abundance, property, price, money, etc., with a view to explain how they are construed with faulty assumptions.

Radheysham and Bhavish, for instance, both seemed to have an equal opportunity to start a business in theory, but Bhavish succeeds in his efforts whereas Radheysham fails in practice!

Why is Dignity Important?

Many years ago, the American psychologist Abraham Harold Maslow proposed a theory according to which human needs follow a hierarchy with security, food, clothing, shelter etc. at the bottom and respect, dignity, and self-actualization at the top.

When people are struggling with material necessities, they are less likely to be reminded of their top needs, such as their own emotional and social well-being, a sense of belonging to the community, esteem, and self-respect that are a necessary constituent of dignity.

What is Dignity?

Dignity as been defined[1] in various different ways. Some describe dignity as a constitutional principle; the heart and soul of the human race. Some call it a useless concept, even stupid, harmful; a loose cannon; an amorphous idea; an empty shell; a two-edge sword; a vacuous concept. Others see in dignity the moral source of human rights; a freestanding truth; an exclusively human characteristic; a spiritual human value; an inviolable right; the pillar of democracy; an honor-related concept; a rank, and an idea linked to the concept of status.

Such conflicting formulations of dignity can be difficult to reconcile, so, one way to deal with this conundrum is to identify what dignity is not.

Is there dignity in homelessness? Or in hunger? Or in destitution? Or in the inability to be with your family? Or being forced to work for economic reasons? Or in manual scavenging? Toilet cleaning? Not being able to say no? But most importantly being blamed for your situation, when social and economic institutions deprive you of any choice of being otherwise, robs you of dignity upfront, taking away from you the dignity of choice itself.

It is therefore important to investigate the principles, the cases and the circumstances that make dignity possible and indeed those that violate it.

Moral, Philosophical and Legal Basis of Dignity

In ethics, the idea of dignity[2] embodies a kind of core moral concern, representing a basic demand rooted in the human self.

Susanne Baer,[3] a constitutional lawyer, judge, and professor at the University of Michigan, has interpreted dignity under the triangle of fundamental rights,[4] namely dignity, liberty, and equality. These three rights, she claims, have distinct meanings, but they have to be interpreted in relation to one another, which means that one cannot exist without the other. So, you cannot have dignity without freedom and equality? Imagine how one can expect dignity when the society one lives in is so unequal (India is now the second most unequal country in the world after[5] Russia).

In “Dignity: Its History and Meaning”, Michael Rosen interprets[6] dignity to mean four different things that can exist separately or in a combination.

The first is dignity identified with status, the dignity of the aristocracy or of the church and church leaders, for instance. Second, dignity identified with intrinsic value, what Kant famously called an absolute, priceless, unconditional worth. The third meaning of dignity refers to an elevated way of behaving — humans must strive to act in ways that reflect our intrinsic worth, which implies that we must endeavor to act freely according to the moral law that we legislate for ourselves. The final conception of dignity that Rosen identifies appeals to the idea of treating persons with respect. This essentially means that they are not to be humiliated or degraded.

The poor dispossessed worker struggling to make ends meet or an unemployed youth looking for a job is also a member of the society. In short, a person with the right to dignity.

Poverty strips that dignity and inflicts shame on the man. This is how we are socially and emotionally conditioned. Unless we are protected by some form of economic security (and the state) we become vulnerable and therefore incapable of thinking long term and fulfilling our life’s ambitions.

Dignity, Rights and Political Freedom

Justice AK Sikri, a distinguished former Judge of the Indian Supreme Court who has frequently spoken about the growing importance[7] of ‘human dignity’ in the philosophy of law, wrote, thus, in a paper[8] titled ‘Human Dignity as a Constitutional Value’:

“. . .that ‘Life’ in Article 21 of the Constitution is not merely the physical act of breathing. It does not connote mere animal existence or continued drudgery through life. Right to life is fundamental to our very existence without which we cannot live as a human being and includes all those aspects of life, which go to make a man’s life meaningful, complete, and worth living.”

“Protection of the right to life, therefore, requires that the basic needs of every citizen are met from the resources of the state. It is with this legal provision of basic wealth and essential income only; an individual can feel adequately empowered and capable of protecting his dignity.”

Justice AK Sikri, while referring to the lessons of World War 2 comments that “there was a realization by the Governments of various countries that human dignity needed to be cherished and protected. The word ‘Dignity” is therefore placed in the very preamble of the Indian constitution.”

“The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights[9] begins its preamble with the acknowledgment that the rights contained in the covenant “derive from the inherent dignity of the human person.” This may not explicitly define a connection between dignity and law as such, but it certainly purports to identify a wholesale connection between dignity and the branch of law devoted to human rights.”

“One of the key facets of twenty-first-century democracies is the primary importance given to the protection of human rights. From this perspective, Dignity is the expression of a basic value accepted in a broad sense by all people, and thus constitutes the first cornerstone in the edifice of human rights.”

“There is a certain fundamental value to the notion of human dignity, which some would consider a pivotal right deeply rooted in any notion of justice, fairness, and a society based on basic rights,[10]” writes Justice Sikri

“However, it would be essential to point out that there is no mention of “dignity” specifically in this chapter on Fundamental Rights. So was the position in the American Constitution, and human dignity as a part of human rights was brought in as a Judge-made doctrine. The Indian Supreme Court has also read human dignity into Articles 14 and 21 of the Constitution by introducing “a judge-made doctrine of human dignity by reading the same into these articles of the Constitution, on the same lines as it was crafted by the American Supreme Court.”

“In shaping and giving true meaning to the fundamental rights enshrined in Part III of the Constitution of India (which are nothing but human rights), is the concept of human dignity which has been in the forefront as well as at the back of the mind of the Supreme Court.”

For, Indian Supreme Court has read “right to life” enshrined under Article 21 as “right to live life with dignity.”

Likewise, human dignity is used as a lodestar for equality and to counter unfair discrimination while interpreting Article 14 of the Constitution, thereby providing a clear linkage and connection between dignity, equality and unfair discrimination under Article 14.

“The reason for enacting this provision in the chapter on Fundamental Rights is to be found in the socio-economic condition of the people at the time when the Constitution came to be enacted. The Constitution-makers found that they had the enormous task before them of changing the socio-economic structure of the country given its precarity, and bringing about a regeneration with a view to reaching social and economic justice to the common person.”

“The political revolution was completed and it had succeeded in bringing freedom to the country but freedom was not an end in itself, it was only a means to an end, the end being the raising of the people to higher levels of achievement and bringing about their total advancement and welfare.”

“Political freedom had no meaning unless it was accompanied by social and economic freedom, and it was, therefore, necessary to carry forward the revolution with a view to creating conditions in which everyone would be able to enjoy basic human rights and participate in the fruits of freedom and liberty in an egalitarian social and economic framework. It was with this end in view that the Constitution-makers enacted the directive principles of state policy in Part IV of the Constitution setting out the constitutional goal of a new socio-economic order.”

The basic spirit of the Indian Constitution is to provide each and every person of the nation equal opportunity to grow as a human being, irrespective of race, caste, religion, community, and social status.

“Once we accept that people are to be respected and treated with dignity, this conception of dignity gives them the right to grow fully. In a country like India, where 1/3rd of the population is living below the poverty line and human beings have no means to have adequate food, clothing, shelter, and education, it not only becomes the duty of the State to provide these facilities to the citizenry, it becomes the human right of such persons to exact such rights from the State.”

Depravity as a Denial of Dignity?

“Being poor is a highly shameful experience, degrading one’s dignity and sense of self-worth. While the manifestations and causes of poverty differ, the humiliation that accompanies it is universal,[11]” writes Keetie Roelen, a research fellow and co-director of the Center for Social Protection at the Institute of Development Studies. In an article on Project Syndicate[12], she cites research findings from the University of Oxford “that people facing economic hardship experience[13] a nearly identical assault on their pride and self-esteem.” She quotes from one case study, that describes the experience of living with material depravation and how those experience affected their mental and psychological well-being. “Not having decent enough clothes to wear or good shoes, jewelry, or cosmetics; not having a good residence; or not having enough material possessions (electricity, TV, fridge, furniture, mobile phone, etc) at home are some of the reasons for being embarrassed.”

“I remember last year, I went out with a ripped slipper,” one participant said, recalling an uncomfortable moment in her life. “I was feeling so shy about myself. I was wondering what others will think about me.” Another participant confessed that he was sad that he did not have a good house, “I would like to have a better house”. The majority of the child participants reported their feelings of sadness and shame for not having a good decent house with basic facilities.”

“This lack of focus on the “psychosocial” side of poverty — the interaction between social forces and individual attitude or behavior[14] in public policy — is misguided. If we are to alleviate human suffering and achieve the UN’s top Sustainable Development Goal[15] of ending poverty by 2030, addressing the intrinsic and instrumental roles that shame plays in poverty must be front and center in our efforts,” Roelen says.

Work as Human Need?

It is ironic that the Indian state has tried to side-step the important aspect of dignity by introducing other rights, such as the Right to Food and the Right to Work, as if providing a meager meal and 100 days of work digging canals is sufficient to ensure dignity.

Consider why the right to work is meaningless unless citizens are provided with the right to dignity — and the means to satisfy its fulfillment — without having the option to choose work or not to work at all. There is a myth that work provides fulfillment and while it may be true for some people, the quality of work is equally important. For instance, working on building a road, knowing very well that it will be washed out in the next rain, may not be particularly validating to the idea of human dignity.

In 1936, the economist John Maynard Keynes recommended increased government spending to help employment. When his proposals[16] were rejected by the conservatives, he suggested an alternative: have the government bury bottles full of cash in disused coal mines, and let the private sector spend its own money to dig the cash back up.

Without doubt, even useless public spending can create jobs including digging for cash bottles, but these are exactly the kind of soul-destroying jobs people do not want. The real-life activity of gold mining, Keynes later reminded, was exactly like this. Gold miners were, after all, going to great lengths to dig cash out of the ground, even though unlimited amounts of cash could be created at essentially no cost with the printing press. And no sooner was gold dug up than much of it was buried again, in places like the gold vault of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, where hundreds of thousands of gold bars sit, doing nothing in particular.

The idea is simple: government creates money and gives it back to people and then asks them to spend it to buy stuff so that manufacturing can go on and wages can be paid and both wages and spending is taxed when they spend, and the cycle continues. What the process does, however, is that it turns perfectly happy, satisfied individuals into money-making machines — money not for the wage laborers but for producers and service providers who do nothing more that skim away part of the money and call this activity their labor, effort and ingenuity. Labour has been publicized as the intrinsic need of man. It is that activity that gives life meaning. Yet, in pre-industrial societies labor was only performed by slaves.

The Greeks in their era of greatness had absolute contempt for work: their slaves alone were permitted to labor, the free man knew only exercises for the body and mind[17].

The right and the capacity to remain idle is therefore central to the idea of dignity. It is only when a person is armed with the power to say no to work can he be genuinely redeemed.

The Right Not to Work[18]

The Cuban born French revolutionary, Paul Lafargue in his pamphlet ‘The Right to be Lazy’ criticized the Marxist perspective on work as dogma and ultimately false by portraying the degeneration and enslavement of human existence when being subsumed under the primacy of work, and argued that freedom, combined with human creativity, is an important source of human progress. In pre-industrial societies, people worked in their own self-interest and the interest of the community and not in the interest of an impersonal corporation or an entrepreneur who was following his own whims and dreams, often incompatible with theirs.

The proposals of American writer Bob Black in his widely published essay ‘The Abolition of Work’ are more radical. He insists that “for humans to be free they must reclaim their time from jobs and employment and turn necessary tasks into free play done voluntarily” and that “no-one should ever work” because work, defined as compulsory productive activity enforced by economic or political means, is the source of most of the misery in the world. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian Darwinian theory he must justify his right to exist[19].

Black quotes the scientist, designer, and futurist Buckminster Fuller, “We should do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living.”

Work as the basis of Value

That brings me to a very important question: how do you sustain a society without work? And that thought requires a paradigmatic shift in the way we conceive “work” itself.

You see, it is important to recognize that money only represents a value that has either existed in nature (land) or derived from it (farming) or adopted (currency, law enforcement) and that the modern system of capitalism is giant machinery conceived and controlled by a few (protected by the police and armies of the state) to transfer that value into their own pockets. Work and jobs and employment which we hold so dear and sacrosanct and essential to our life is a part of that imagination and indoctrination. The factory in which my father worked, I vividly recall, had posters on the shop floor proudly displaying “Work is Worship” and “Work Hard” and I grew up believing that work is life. Take work out of life and you are like a fish out of water.

One way to look at work is to accept that our minds have been wired to such an extent that we seek our life’s purpose and fulfillment in it. The other way is to recognize that the system has taken away from us our ability to think for ourselves — to live and work according to our own will, our moods, our preferences, and our own likings. A false dichotomy has been placed before us, instead.

You are either a consumer or a producer. Even when you are both, as economic texts tell us, you are largely a consumer, a laborer who will produce only a small amount (working at a factory) but consume the equivalent of whatever he produces (paying from his salary) or largely a producer (like car manufacturer) who is also a consumer, in the way he needs food and clothing and entertainment.

Producers are glorified and rewarded handsomely whereas consumers are condemned, although it is clear there cannot be a society without consumers whereas a society without organized producers can be easily conceived.

The many users of Google and Facebook today, for instance, as is increasingly being recognized are not passive consumers; they are significant producers in the ecosystem. Unfortunately, the entire ‘production’ is monetized by these platforms for their own benefit. This they do by charging the advertisers. You, the consumer, has become a product that is being sold to advertisers (to attract you to consume more — in a different role) at the hands of companies that are doing little more than short-selling and buying you back cheaply.

In an ideal world, part of the Google and Facebook earnings, a large percentage to be fair, should go back to users for their contribution to that economic machine, but the corporate and legal system works in such a way that it lands up in the pockets of a few founders, investors and senior executives.

Justin E.H. Smith, a philosopher at the University of Paris, in his book ‘Irrationality: A History of the Dark Side of Reason’ claims that the state should re-distribute profits of corporations such as Amazon and Facebook by taking away about 99.9 percent of the fortunes of Bezos, Zuckerberg, and others, and turning the big tech companies into public utilities. That would be a real justice to the consumers, in his view.

Ironically, instead of asking a fair share in their profits, we applaud them for taking away from us what is our moral right and our legitimate due. We protest high taxes and we hail entrepreneurs as wealth creators, change agents, futurists, and saviors of society. Worse, Facebook pays out less than 1% of its revenues as salaries to its staff. Even Walmart, the Darwinian retailer responsible for the death of the small neighborhood store, by contrast, paid 40% to its employees.

“In the 1970s in the Western countries, many people used to work for a few months, then go away for a break and then back to work for a while. This was possible in times of almost full employment and an egalitarian culture[20].

The ability to reject work comes from the option to do something else, such as carrying on a business of one’s choice, pursuing arts and music and travel without having to worry about food, clothing, accommodation and basic healthcare and entertainment.”

One way to ensure that people are provided with an option to perform work of one’s choice is to ensure that the economic value produced in society is proportionally distributed. Think of dividing the GDP by the number of people and handing it over to them in equal proportion. What we see is the top 10% of the society accrue 70% of the GDP produced. Each person has a right to the fruits of economic progress. This can be achieved by making available to everyone, whether they hold a job or not, a minimum income sufficient to cover housing, transportation, education, medical care and some discretionary expense, which could be accomplished easily by instituting a fair distribution of the GDP. Most importantly, empowering every individual with some of essential income will provide freedom to reject work. Put another way, every individual will be protected from selling themselves into the slavery of repulsive work. In India, many people are forced to take up jobs as manual scavengers, latrine cleaners and road sweepers etc. because they are devoid of any choice.

Right to Dignity actually makes the Right to Work irrelevant in so far as the objective of work is to acquire the means for a livelihood. Right to Dignity[21] is much more than the Right to Work. It forces the state to institute “policies and techniques to achieve steady economic, social and cultural development and full and productive employment under conditions safeguarding fundamental political and economic freedoms to the individual” as provided for in the Constitution itself.

“The Preamble of our Constitution defines the ‘idea of India’ as a secular and democratic republic committed to securing for all its citizens, justice, liberty, equality and fraternity, all aimed at securing the Dignity of the individual — the cornerstone in the edifice of human rights,” wrote Dr. Ashwani Kumar, a distinguished lawyer, former Additional Solicitor General of India, Member of Parliament and Union Minister for Law & Justice and a crusader for human rights and dignity, in an opinion piece in The Tribune.

“The contours of the constitutional right to dignity have been defined and repeatedly affirmed by the Supreme Court as a non-negotiable constitutional imperative. In one of his earlier judgments on the subject Justice PN Bhagwati, speaking for the court declared in Francis Mullin Vs. Administer, UT & Ors. (1981) thus: “…that the right to life includes the right to live with Human Dignity and all that goes along with it, namely, the bare necessities of life such as adequate nutrition, clothing and shelter and facilities for reading, writing and expressing oneself in diverse forms freely moving about and mixing and commingling with fellow human beings…Every act which offends against or impairs human dignity would constitute deprivation pro tanto of this right to live…”

Elaborating[22] upon the embrace of the dignity principle the court declared that: “The reverence of life is insegregabily associated with the dignity of human being…The majesty of law protects the dignity of citizens in a society governed by law… It should not be forgotten that when dignity is lost, the breadth of life goes into oblivion[23]…”

“Despite economic growth, can we deny that rising income inequalities, a widening social hiatus between the privileged and the have-nots, continuing gender biases, caste-based discrimination, exploitation of children, callous disregard of old and the infirm, violence against women, and rampant drug addiction amongst the youth have diminished the dignity of our people? Can we question the fact that tribals, suffering an onslaught on their way of life and identity, feel alienated in their own country, as in the case of minorities? he asks. Daily demonstrations of abuse of power, infraction of privacy, recurrence of instances of custodial torture, and the unequal and oppressive application of laws against those vulnerable continue to diminish our self-worth.”[24]

Indeed, the quality of any democracy in action is to be tested upon the “expression (it gives) to the values of human dignity and equality.[25]”

“Our politics and governance,” said Dr. Ashwani “have not measured up to the hopes and aspirations of a free people who had expected freedom to result in greater happiness, in larger freedom for the largest number.”

In the case of Radheysham and his family, on Dr. Ashwani Kumar’s account, the state has clearly violated their dignity, by failing to provide them with the means and resources, access to their share of national wealth and the accrued rent, for instance, which they could have used to tide over the Covid crisis.

But why is it that Radheysham’s meager loan from HDFC Bank that pushed him into poverty and eventual death got recalled but Bhavish’s financiers not only rolled over their equity, but they also actually increased it — adding to his net wealth?

This is a question that requires further investigation.

Chapter 2 is therefore dedicated to exposing the singular building block of economics — value — and its twisted moral interpretation and subjectivity. Because in the end, just the act of living — the fact that we were borne and carry out our basic bodily function and meet our psychosocial needs, should end up benefitting the few at the expense of the multitude?

Is the state a willing accomplice to the rich? Or a victim of philosophical and moral value system, that society has somehow come to accept?

[1] THE USEFULNESS OF THE LEGAL CONCEPT OF HUMAN DIGNITY IN THE HUMAN RIGHTS DISCOURSE: LITERATURE REVIEW Borja Fernández Burgueño Universidad Rey Juan Carlos

[2] The Mirage of Dignity on the Highways of Human ‘Progress’: — the bystanders perspective …By Lukman Harees

[3] Dignity, liberty, equality: A fundamental rights triangle of constitutionalism by Susanne Baer, , University of Toronto Law Journal

[4] The Difference a Justice may Make: Remarks at the …. https://repository.law.umich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1872&context=articles

[5] India second-most ‘unequal’ country after Russia: Report …. https://gulfnews.com/world/asia/india/india-second-most-unequal-country-after-russia-report-1.1890825

[6] https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674984059

[7]https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/telangana/human-dignity-has-growing-significance-in-jurisprudence/article24727648.ece

[8] http://blog.hawaii.edu/elp/files/2016/06/HUMAN-DIGNITY-HAWAI.pdf

[9] https://treaties.un.org/doc/publication/unts/volume%20999/volume-999-i-14668-english.pdf

[10] HUMAN DIGNITY AS A CONSTITUTIONAL VALUE. http://blog.hawaii.edu/elp/files/2016/06/HUMAN-DIGNITY-HAWAI.pdf

[11] Poverty Is Also a Psychosocial Problem | by Keetie Roelen …. https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/poverty-reduction-strategies-humiliation-by-keetie-roelen-2017-11

[12] https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/poverty-reduction-strategies-humiliation-by-keetie-roelen-2017-11

[13] https://www.spi.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/WP2ExperiencesofpovertyIndia.pdf