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In the post-cold war, there has been a shift from ideological issues to social justice, distributive justice and check on the excesses by the state against the individual. The issue of human rights is gaining momentum with the movements for environmental protection and sustainable development, movement for the protection of minorities and other people, abolishing of the child labor etc. that have largely contributed to the cause of society. 
Democracy, development and respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms are interdependent and mutually reinforcing. It is essential for the states to foster participation by the poorest people in the decision-making process by the community in which they live. Discourse of human rights has penetrated virtually every kind of political debate. Norms of human rights have fundamentally and irrevocably challenged traditional norms of national sovereignty.  Vaclav Havel asserted that “it is not permissible to slaughter people, to evict them from their homes, to maltreat them and to deprive them of their property. It is true that human rights are indivisible and that if injustice is done to some, it is done to all.”
    The distinguished jurist Louis Henkin calling the conception of human rights the idea of our time expressed that there is no agreement between the sector and the theological, or between traditional and modern perspectives, on man and the Universe. One cannot prove, or even persuade, whether a substantially free economy or substantial planning is more conducive to the good society or the good of individual man. But there is now a working consensus that every man and woman between birth and death, counts, and has a claim to an irreducible core of integrity and dignity. In the consensus,in the world we have and are shaping, the idea of human rights is the essential idea.   
This work examines the basic questions: when and why did the idea of human rights emerge? Does the government have the accountability for public safety and public health? Is the perception of human being different when looked at from an individual, national or global angle? What is the value of embracing non-justiciable rights as part of the jurisprudence of human rights? How far the judicial system in India has been able to address the issue of human right? Is the non-availability of state funds a valid ground to deny basic social and economic rights such as food, shelter and livelihood?