Answer:

The emphasis in the entire scheme of the Constitution under the headings of the Fundamental Rights and the Directive Principle is on building an egalitarian society and on the concept of socio-economic justice. However, there are some basic differences between the fundamental rights and the directives.

♤ The fundamental rights contained in Part III deal with justice in its dimensions as individual, political and civil rights, while directive principles contained in Part IV, spell out justice at the social level and deal with social and economic progress.

♤ Fundamental rights operate as a source of restriction on the powers of the ‘State’. The powers of the state are subject to those rights. Directive principles, on the other hand, are incorporated in the Constitution to guide the State in matters of legislation and administration. They can be treated as provisions that streamline the legislative and administrative activities of the State.

Thus Fundamental rights and directive principles represent the negative and positive aspects of State obligations. As a sequel to such a difference, the Constitution also provides that the fundamental rights are enforceable through courts of law while the directive principles are outside the pale of judicial enforcement. In short, fundamental rights and directive principles differ in colour, content and character.

In spite of all these differences between them, there is a common thread running through fundamental rights and directive principles. They have a common origin and share common objectives i.e. ‘to ensure the welfare of the society envisaged by the Preamble. lt cannot be disputed that both strive for justice. Directive Principles deal with the concept of justice at macro level while fundamental rights lay down the

concept at micro level. Further, directive principles form the distributive aspect of justice while fundamental rights constitute its corrective aspect .Thus both complement each other.

Mostly, directive principles have been used to broaden and to give depth to some fundamental rights and to imply some more rights therein for the people over and what are expressly stated in the fundamental rights. For instance by reading article 21 with the directive principles, the Supreme Court has expanded the horizon of article 21 and derived there from different rights of the citizen. Some of them are;

♤ Right to life includes the right to enjoy pollution free water, air and environments. The court has derived this right by reading article 21 with article 48A.

♤ Right to education under article 21A is to be understood with reference to directive principles contained in article 41 and 45.

Thus both fundamental right and Directive Principle aim at the same goal of bringing about a social revolution of a welfare state and complement and supplement each other towards this goal.