Constitution day on November 26, 2024 marked 75 years of the adoption of the Constitution and constitutional governance in independent India. The Constituent Assembly debates show the intellectual engagement of leaders from a spectrum of ideologies, right wing to left wing, in building a single political identity that was accommodative of the interests and rights of multiple cultural groups.
The Constitution-makers accepted the liberal framework, but wanted the state to play a positive role in intervening and reducing inequality due to poor social indicators at the time of Independence. With liberalism, as a political ideology, there was an insistence that there should be freedom for citizens to carry out activities without any state interference. There was the belief that only in a free environment could human potentialities, be they intellectual, moral and physical, be realised. Thus, liberty became the core value of liberalism.
The Indian Constitution makers agreed to create a liberal political state in India. But considering the social and economic inequalities, they felt that a complete withdrawal of the state would perpetuate the existing inequalities and worsen it further. So, it was that the state should be given a positive role to intervene and create conditions for everyone to participate equally in the development process. Thus, affirmative action and reservation policies to treat unequals in an unequal manner to achieve the constitutional vision of equality have become an important aspect of the Indian Constitution.
An egalitarian outlook
Its vision of equality aims to create an egalitarian society to minimise economic inequalities among the people. Reflecting John Rawls’ egalitarian liberalism, including the three important principles of equal basic liberties, equal opportunities and difference, the Constitution aims to create an egalitarian society. The fundamental rights in Part III and the Directive Principles of State Policy (DPSP) in Part IV of the Constitution reflect all the above three principles of egalitarian liberalism. Thus egalitarian liberalism aims to reduce inequality and not create an absolute equal society. Article 38(2) of DPSP insists that the state shall strive to minimise the inequalities of income and eliminate inequalities in status, facilities and opportunities. The constitutional ideological framework lays emphasis on reducing inequalities and creating an egalitarian society based on equal opportunities and facilities through state intervention. Further, Article 39(c) emphasises that the economic system ought not to result in a concentration of wealth and means of production to the common detriment.
The Supreme Court of India has reiterated this principle in many of its judgments till the end of the 1990s. In D.S. Nakara & Others vs Union Of India (1982), the Court said that the basic framework of socialism in the Constitution is to provide a decent standard of life to the working people and social security from cradle to grave, reiterating the role of the welfare state in India. In Air India Statutory Corporation vs United Labour Union & Ors (1996), the Court said that the ideological aspects of the Indian Constitution found in the Preamble, Fundamental Rights and DPSP aim to establish an egalitarian social order, protecting social and economic justice and the dignity of individual by providing equality of status and opportunities.
In Samatha vs State of Andhra Pradesh & Ors. (1997), the Court interpreted that the meaning of the word “socialism” in the Constitution is to reduce inequalities in income and provide equal opportunities and facilities to create an egalitarian social order. Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer’s interpretation of Article 39(b) of the DPSP, in State Of Karnataka And Anr Etc vs Shri Ranganatha Reddy & Anr. Etc, that public and private resources fall within the ambit of community resources, was in line with the constitutional ideology of creating an egalitarian society by strengthening the state’s power of redistribution of resources for common good towards reducing inequality.
But recently, the Court overturned this interpretation without locating it within Article 39(c), which empowers the state to intervene and regulate the economic system to prevent the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few towards creating an egalitarian society.
Economic reforms and inequality
After the adoption of neoliberal economic reforms in India, the constitutional ideology took a back seat and the idea of a welfare state as envisaged in the Constitution has withdrawn its commitments towards creating an egalitarian society. Lucas Chancel and Thomas Piketty from the Paris School of Economics have documented the rising inequality in India in their work, “Indian Income Inequality, 1922-2015: From British Raj to Billionaire Raj?” (2019).
Their research shows that the top 1% of earners had a share of less than 21% of total income in the 1930s. But after Independence, due to welfare state intervention, based on constitutional ideology, this gap reduced where the top 1% earners had a share of 6% of the total income in the 1980s.
After the implementation of neoliberal reforms in the 1990s, there were major structural changes that happened in the Indian economy, which prioritised private capital investment and a slow withdrawal of the welfare interventionist state. The state took the positive role of creating and strengthening markets rather than working towards creating an egalitarian society, as envisaged in the Constitution. As a consequence of this, the top 1% income has reached 22% of the total income pushing back to an inequality situation worse than that in the pre-Independence period. They reiterated this inequality status in their recent research in 2024 emphasising that the top 1% of income and wealth shares have reached 22.6% and 40.1% by 2022-23, which is considered very high.
The “State of Inequality in India Report” (2022), prepared by the Institute for Competitiveness (commissioned by the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister), highlighted the Periodic Labour Force Survey 2019-20, which recorded that average monthly wages of ₹25,000 (₹3 lakh an annum) is being earned by the top 10% and the remaining 90% earn less than ₹.25,000 a month. This shows extreme inequality and how the majority are being pushed into poverty, violating constitutional ideology.
An overlap with social inequality
Further, the report titled “Towards Tax Justice and Wealth redistribution in India” (2024 by the World Inequality Lab at the Paris School of Economics), has brought in evidence to show how economic inequality and social inequality overlap in India. By 2022-23, 90% of the billionaire wealth was held by the upper castes in India. Scheduled Tribes are not present in billionaire wealth. Other Backward Classes (OBC) have a mere 10% presence and Scheduled Castes have a 2.6% representation in billionaire wealth. The report further emphasises that between 2014 and 2022, the OBC share has reduced from 20% to 10% and upper caste share has increased from 80% to 90% in billionaire wealth. The upper castes are the only group which owns wealth more than its proportion of population, reiterating how social capital and economic advantages are overlapping in India. Further, Oxfam International highlights the rise in the number of billionaires from nine in the year 2000 to 119 in 2023. It further compares income inequality and shows that it will take 941 years for a minimum wage earner to earn what a top corporate executive earns a year in India.
The constitutional vision of creating an egalitarian social order by minimising income inequality and eliminating social inequality is under threat from the neoliberal ideological order. Violating the constitutional ideology, inequality levels are widening, strengthening wealth concentration among the few. Further, social inequality overlaps with economic inequality to give the upper castes a greater advantage in contemporary India. Constitution Day has passed, but there is an opportunity for us to critically evaluate our political and economic practices within the constitutional framework, to assess our achievements and failures, reiterating Babasaheb’s words that social and economic inequality will put political democracy in peril.
Venkatanarayanan Sethuraman is Associate Professor and Head of the Department of International Studies, Political Science and History at Christ University, Bengaluru. The views expressed are personal
Published – November 27, 2024 12:16 am IST
