The Supreme Court, in keeping with its current stance, has taken a bold and progressive step in legalising passive — or unassisted — euthanasia. This places India among a handful of nations like the Benelux countries and Switzerland, which allow some form of mercy killing. In keeping with the enormity of the change that it has ushered in, the court has also put in place stringent safeguards to render negligible the chances of abuse. First, it will be an act of omission (not taking certain medical measures) and not commission (actively assisting in such an act). Second, only at least a two-judge bench of a high court will be able to authorise the act, and that too, after a panel of experts has held that there is very little chance of a revival of a brain-dead person. The court’s decision recognises certain fundamental principles. One is that it does no good for society to wash its hands of the matter by holding that it is the duty of the medical profession to try to save a life and it will not do anything contrary. This does not recognise two equal realities: there is an intrinsic dignity in life and it is the duty of all to live only so long as one can do so with dignity, and the social cost (to family and state) of keeping alive by medical means a person who is for all practical purposes dead — and likely to remain so — is enormous.
The Supreme Court has really shown the way and there is a heavy duty on both the state and citizens to follow up with what devolves on their respective shoulders. The court has said that Parliament should now pass the appropriate legislation. Thus it amounts to pronouncing the constitutional validity of a measure before it is a statute, when the sequence is usually the reverse. The court has stepped into a vacuum which would not have existed had the other branches of the state done their duty with alacrity, and it derives its authority for such activism from the intangible but powerful premise that it is publicly seen to be doing what is not just right, but overdue. The duty of citizens and civil society is even greater. For euthanasia to be practised effectively and without controversy, it is necessary for citizens who are as forward looking as the court to execute a “living will”. A person, while still very much in her senses and maybe long before she is even seriously ill, should commit to paper something like this: If it comes to the stage when I have become so vegetative that I can neither decide if I want to live any more (the court has also simultaneously decriminalised suicide) nor have the ability to take the consequential action, a good doctor and lawyer together should end the torture on myself and society. Once this practice becomes common, the state should set up a designated authority to order execution of such a will. Many societies since ancient times have practised the principle that there can be no life without dignity. It is the medical sciences which, with the invention of devices like ventilators, have in the last few decades been able to prolong life almost indefinitely without paying adequate attention to making the extended lives meaningful too.
