Abstract
Technology has been evolving rapidly to bring transformative developments to human life. Every technological advancement simultaneously carries both beneficial and adverse implications, where the beneficial aspects are widely adopted. While the adverse aspects carrying emerging discrepancies require examination, particularly at the evolving stage to combat the future consequences through a balanced constitutional and regulatory framework rather than uncertain, reactionary measures. Therefore, the emergence of cyborg technologies represents one of the most significant intersections between humans and technology. The integration of biological organisms with technological instruments has greater implications on human enhancement, therapeutic remedy, and restoration of bodily functions. However, critical concerns regarding technological inequality arise through unequal accessibility, socio-economic exclusion, and concentration of opportunities and resources within economically privileged sections of society.
This article explores the technological inequality within India and its possible constitutional implications, particularly in light of Articles 14, 16, and 21 of the Constitution. It analyses how technological inaccessibility may gradually become a determining factor for opportunities, healthcare access, and socio-economic inclusivity, thus, ultimately resulting in technological disparity. The article emphasizes the necessity for state intervention and widening constitutional interpretation to accommodate emerging challenges relating to technological rights, neuro-rights, cognitive liberty, and equitable accessibility. The central objective is to examine the evolving integration of humans and technology through constitutional lens and values determining substantive equality, justice, and welfare in the society.
Keywords: Cyborgs, Technological Inequality, Artificial Intelligence, Unequal accessibility, Constitutional Rights.
Introduction: Evolution of Technology and the Emergence of Cyborgs
Technology has captured the world beyond an ordinary, prudent human mind could ponder. This dramatic shift happened with a gradual evolution of computing systems and the operating softwares. With the growth of technology, new terminologies keep defining various functions and operations of the control systems. Machines such as computers were largely meant for solving complex problems, programmed mainly by humans. Meanwhile, robotic systems allowed the computers to function with bodies, interacting physically with the environment. However, the early systems were operating on a rule-based programming, resulting in repetition. Today, AI has transcended conventional programming systems with the emergence of machine learning and deep learning by mimicking human intelligence. Such as the systems earlier operated with already existing embedded instructions, however, today, with the rise of automation, ML and DL, machines are capable of identifying, learning and analysing patterns in accordance with the provided data with the help of algorithmic processes. This evolving technology today has become an inseparable part of humans, with respect to not only utility but temporal aspects. It is no longer a mere tool for convenience, but became deeply embedded in human existence, influencing human lives related to time, experience, and communication.
One of the significant aspects of this inseparability is the emergence of the ‘cyborg’. Cyborg, also known as cybernetic organism, is a conscious and biological organism integrated with technological entities, combining physical and machinery components into one.
The origination of cyborgs goes back to 1960, when the term “cybernetic organism” was first coined by scientists Manfred Clynes and Nathan Kline during working with NASA’s research on enabling humans to survive in outer-space conditions. They wanted the human body to adapt to such an environment through incorporating technology within the organism itself.
While the concept has evolved significantly throughout the years, making biological parts of living organisms controlled by implanted technology. This could be attained in various forms, such as neural implants, inserting a device into the nervous system like a neural chip or cochlear implants to help individuals with deafness hear, bypassing the damaged parts of the ear. Neil Harbisson is a good example in this aspect, who was an artist, born colour blind, and thereby had an antenna into his skull in 2004 through surgery. This device allowed him to perceive beyond ordinary human colour vision, to include infrared and ultraviolet light which a normal human cannot see. Such implants can help counteract against diseases like Alzeimer’s, epilepsy, along with cognitive or physical enhancements, boosting memory, improving learning and retrieving information. Elon Musk’s Neuralink company is working on such technologies to enhance human brain systems. Prosthetics, which are artificial devices inserted to replace any missing body part, like hands, arms, and legs also form a vital aspect in the field that helps restore the functioning of a body part. It could be a basic artificial limb operating normally like a body part, an advanced prosthetic operating through electronic impulses and muscle signals from the body, or a highly advanced prosthetic to function with brain signals.
The cyborg technology has innumerable beneficial effects, allowing humans to move beyond the abilities provided by nature and explore the extraordinary with various enhancements in the human body. Along with this, it is an asset for specially-abled persons to restore or implant the essential missing body parts to perform more efficacy. This, however, raises a critical concern regarding the availability of such resources to different strata of society in the largest democracy and highly populated country like India, where people avoid basic medical treatment due to high costs, caught in a vicious cycle of systemic rural-urban disparities. In such a situation, common patterns of technological inequality arise amidst the persistent socio-economic gap.
Emerging Challenges and Discrepancies of Cyborg Technology
Some of the significant challenges that the cyborg technology poses is the unequal accessibility. Major technological enhancements advancing human capabilities, such as cognitive abilities, productivity, efficiency, and sensory capabilities, remain largely accessible only to the economically privileged sections of society. This is due to the high costs and unaffordability of the lower strata of society, raising concerns of a gradual transformation from socio-economic disparity towards technological disparity. Individuals possessing such enhanced capabilities may have greater access to opportunities in employment, education, and overall social mobility, thereby creating a technologically privileged class. This allows resources and opportunities to remain concentrated within higher classes, further widening the already existing digital divide.
The concern becomes more significant in a country like India, where inaccessibility and inequality with respect to technology, education, and resources already persisted for decades across different sections of society. The augmentation and development of such technologies beyond the needs will result in the deepening of systemic inequality and undermine the greater constitutional vision of substantive equality and social justice.
Apart from human enhancements, cyborg technology constitutes immense therapeutic value. Technologies such as cochlear implants, neural implants, and advanced AI-assisted prosthetics have the potential to mitigate disabilities in organisms and restore essential bodily functions. However, the economic affordability for accessing such treatment becomes a concern.
India is already suffering from major healthcare inequalities. Although technologically advanced medical treatment is available but not accessible to economically weaker sections of society due to high costs and rising expenditure. Reports also indicate that millions of people in India fall below the poverty line due to healthcare expenses, while many individuals avoid or delay essential medical treatment because of financial constraints. This disparity has a much wider scope in rural areas, where lack of infrastructure, limited medical professionals, transportation barriers, and inaccessibility to modern healthcare technologies persists for long. Rural communities often struggle to access even basic healthcare services.
Owing to such a situation, cyborg technologies risk becoming privileges primarily available to economically empowered, alienating the huge masses of the society. This creates a circle where affluent individuals can easily mitigate disabilities, enhance bodily functioning through advanced technology, and the economically weaker classes may suffer and get excluded, resulting in imbalance and monopoly of higher classes in the society.
Constitutional Conflict with Technological Inequality
The emergence and development of cyborg technologies undoubtedly reflect scientific and human advancements. Such technologies enhance cognitive abilities, restore bodily functions, mitigate disabilities improve human life beyond an ordinary organism. However, alongside these developments, strong constitutional concerns emerge regarding the scope of constitutional rights to accommodate technological inequality and thereby recognise emerging technological rights within the constitutional framework. This advanced integration of cyborg technologies into human life raises critical concerns over equality, accessibility, dignity, and fair opportunities in a technologically advancing society.
Article 14 of the Constitution of India guarantees equality before law and equal protection of laws. Nevertheless, challenges pertaining to unequal accessibility to enhancement technologies may gradually create a technologically privileged class endowed with disproportionate cognitive, physical, and other productive advantages overshadowing rights of the economically underprivileged class. This disparity may further make the opportunities and social mobility dependent upon technological accessibility rather than equal capacity, extending beyond today’s yardstick for inequality and inaccessibility.
Additionally, the issue reflects within Article 16, which guarantees equality of opportunity in matters of public employment. Direct or indirect influence of these advancements on professional efficiency, productivity, employability, and competitiveness may lead to social and economic exclusion of underprivileged sections despite the existence of constitutional legal equality. Consequently, the very letter and spirit of equal opportunity may remain theoretical altogether, creating technological advancements itself a determining factor for socio-economic inclusivity.
Alongside, the principle laid down in Rex v. Sussex Justices [1924] 1 KB 256, that “Justice must not only be done, but must also be seen to be done”, becomes relevant in the given context. Where systemic disproportionate concentration of opportunities within technologically and economically privileged classes may create both actual inequality and perception of structural unfairness, thereby undermining public confidence in constitutional values of equality, justice, and fairness.
The constitutional implications of cyborgs further extend to Article 21, guaranteeing the right to life and personal liberty. Over time, judicial interpretation has widened the scope of Article 21 to include the right to live with dignity, access to healthcare, bodily integrity, and privacy. Therapeutic cyborg technologies, owing to their potential for bodily improvements and enhancements, act as a cure for such individuals. However, the concern over accessibility looms large depending upon financial capacity and geographical location. Especially in India, where healthcare inequality, rural-urban disparities, and inadequate infrastructure already restrict access to even basic treatment requirements, advanced restorative technologies remain beyond the reach of underprivileged classes. Therefore, a particular affluent group may continue to dominate, imbalancing the structure of the society by excluding the majority of groups, both socially and economically.
Regulatory and Constitutional Measures
The need for a regulatory and welfare-based framework to ensure equitable accessibility of advanced medico-technological instruments for physical impairments in economically underprivileged classes exists. It safeguards their access against confinement to affluent classes. This could be achieved through greater integration of public and private healthcare institutions to promote medico-technological instruments, enabling affordable, subsidized, and wider utilisation of restorative cyborg technologies. It becomes significant in India, with respect to need for state intervention through public-private collaborations, ensuring inclusion of various sections of the society.
Regulation of enhancement technologies which are capable to create disproportionate advantages in certain aspects becomes highly relevant in the emergence of cybernetic organism. Unregulated enhancements move against the constitutionally established principles of socio-economic justice.
Simultaneously, constitutional rights have always been interpreted in the widest sense possible for securing the rights and freedoms of individuals. The same becomes noteworthy to be utilised for the purposes of combating the emerging challenges posed by technological inequality. Subsequently, it may encompass equitable technological accessibility, neuro-rights, and cognitive liberty and privacy, protecting individuals and their rights.
Conclusion: Technological Advancement and Constitutional Morality
With respect to the persistent global technological pace in diverse aspects, howsoever advanced, the Indian Constitutional framework will always remain a beacon of light not only for governance, but also for recognising fundamental necessities of the Constitutional values. This is required for the meaningful realisation of rights and freedom enshrined within the Constitution in consonance with the ideals embodied under the Preamble. This respectfully fulfills the essentials of adhering to both the letter and spirit of the Constitution, ensuring that technological advancements happen alongside constitutional principles of substantive equality and justice. Thereby, running parallelly towards developing the nation, preventing technological advancements to become a source of exclusion and inequality. Moreover, the true objectives of technological developments must not be exclusive of altogether human development, but remain in harmony with the core constitutional principles allowing co-existence and welfare.
THIS ARTICLE IS WRITTEN BY HIMANSHI SHARMA FROM RENAISSANCE LAW COLLEGE, DEVI AHILYA VISHWAVIDYALAYA, INDORE
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Rex v. Sussex Justices, [1924] 1 KB 256
