Rights in the Eyes of the Beholder: The Lived Hierarchy of Rights in India's Democracy

This paper examines how citizens in India perceive and prioritise fundamental rights, with particular attention to the six freedoms under Article 19(1) and the property right. While the freedoms of Article 19(1) remain central to democratic citizenship, the Forty-Fourth Constitutional Amendment of 1978 reclassified the right to property as a constitutional right under Article 300A. This shift prompts an important question: Does the diminished constitutional rank of property correspond to its place in popular hierarchies of rights? Our in-depth interviews with 26 respondents, whose livelihoods make them especially sensitive to changes in both categories of rights, reveal that citizens continue to prioritise property rights and consider it a key to making other rights meaningful. Within Article 19(1), valuations vary according to lived experience: journalists and activists emphasise freedom of expression, while migrants and small entrepreneurs prioritise movement, residence, and profession. A recurring asymmetry also emerges, whereby individuals defend expansive protections for the rights they exercise, yet endorse restrictions on the same rights when claimed by others. By mapping these lived hierarchies of rights, this note from the field highlights a persistent gap between constitutional design and public perception. It suggests that constitutional amendments may alter the formal status of rights without reshaping their everyday salience, with important implications for debates on rights-ordering, constitutional legitimacy, and democratic practice. These findings reveal a gap, raising questions about how legal amendments shape, or fail to shape, the lived hierarchy of rights.