Chapter 7: Indian Constitution
In October 1949 the Constituent Assembly of India — the elected body that wrote the Constitution — turned at last to its opening words.
This was almost the final item of business. The Assembly had spent nearly three years settling the powers of Parliament, the rights of citizens, the position of the states and the reach of the courts. Only then did it take up the paragraph that would stand at the very front of the finished document. The first words were written last, because a statement of purpose must match the document it introduces, not the hopes with which the work began.
The debate that followed was not a formality. One member, H. V. Kamath, moved that the Preamble should open with an invocation to God. Others objected. A Constitution that promised every citizen freedom of belief, they argued, could not begin by settling for all Indians a question that each Indian was free to answer alone. Members on both sides claimed to be defending the same thing — the dignity of the individual.
The amendment was put to a vote and defeated. The Assembly then agreed that the Preamble, as drafted, should stand as part of the Constitution.
The paragraph that survived that afternoon is barely eighty words long. It names who gave India its Constitution, what kind of state India would be, and what that state exists to secure.
Diagram
Fig. 7.0-1 Caption: The opening page of the original Constitution of India, hand-lettered and framed with illustrated borders. Brief: Source or reproduce the calligraphed Preamble page of the original Constitution, showing the ornamental border and the hand-written text. Label the phrase ‘WE, THE PEOPLE OF INDIA’ at the top and the date line near the foot of the page. Do not add any modern annotation over the artwork.
7.1 The Preamble and Its Importance
Every long legal document begins by saying what it is for. A constitution, which sets out how a whole country is to be governed, has more reason than most to do so.
The Constitution of India opens with a single paragraph of about eighty words. That paragraph is short, but it is quoted in courtrooms, in Parliament and in political argument more often than almost any other part of the document.
7.1.1 What a Preamble Is and Why It Matters
The Preamble is the introductory statement placed at the head of a constitution, declaring who is giving the constitution, what kind of state it creates, and what that state is meant to secure.
A preamble does not, by itself, give anyone a right that can be claimed in court. No citizen can go to a judge and demand ‘fraternity’. The enforceable promises lie in the Articles that follow.
Its work is different. It fixes the purposes against which the rest of the document is to be read. When the words of an Article are unclear, courts look to the Preamble to decide which reading fits the Constitution’s declared object.
Before reading further, read the Preamble itself. It is one continuous sentence, and every phrase in it was argued over.
Notice the grammar of the paragraph. The subject is ‘we, the people’; the verbs are ‘adopt, enact and give to ourselves’. The people are shown acting on themselves, not receiving something from a ruler.
Notice also the phrase ‘to secure to all its citizens’. Justice, liberty and equality are not described as things India already possesses. They are described as objects the new state is being built to obtain.
The Preamble therefore records four things: the source of the Constitution’s authority, the nature of the Indian state, the objectives it must pursue, and the date on which it was adopted.
Diagram
Fig. 7.1-1 Caption: The Preamble records four separate things in a single sentence. Brief: Four labelled boxes arranged around a central box marked ‘The Preamble’. Box 1 ‘Source of authority — We, the people of India’. Box 2 ‘Nature of the state — Sovereign, Socialist, Secular, Democratic, Republic’. Box 3 ‘Objectives — Justice, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity’. Box 4 ‘Date of adoption — 26 November 1949’. Keep the design plain; no ornament.
There is a limit to what this paragraph can tell us. It records what the Constituent Assembly finally agreed to print, not the disagreements that were settled on the way to it, and not how far the promises were kept afterwards. A statement of purpose is evidence of intention. It is not evidence of performance, and the rest of this chapter, not the Preamble, shows what machinery was actually built.
Whether the Preamble is part of the Constitution at all was itself disputed. In the Berubari Union case in 1960 the Supreme Court took the view that the Preamble is not a part of the Constitution. In Kesavananda Bharati v. State of Kerala in 1973 the Court held that it is part of the Constitution and can be read as such.
7.1.2 The Objectives Resolution and the Making of the Preamble
The Preamble did not appear from nowhere. On 13 December 1946, days after the Constituent Assembly first met, Jawaharlal Nehru moved the Objectives Resolution before it.
The Resolution declared what the Assembly was setting out to build: an independent republic, with power derived from the people, guaranteeing justice, equality and freedom to all, and safeguards for minorities and depressed classes. The Assembly adopted it on 22 January 1947.
For the next three years the Objectives Resolution worked as the Assembly’s statement of direction. When the drafting was complete, the Preamble was written to carry its substance into the finished Constitution.
The Constitution was adopted on 26 November 1949 and came into force on 26 January 1950. The Preamble has been amended once since — by the Constitution (Forty-second Amendment) Act, 1976, which inserted the words ‘Socialist’ and ‘Secular’, and added ‘integrity’ to the phrase on fraternity.
7.1.4 The Nature of the Indian State
The Preamble describes the Indian state with five words in a fixed order: Sovereign, Socialist, Secular, Democratic, Republic. Each word rules something out as much as it declares something.
Sovereign
To call India sovereign is to say that it is subject to no external authority. Internally, Indian legislatures may make law on any subject the Constitution assigns them, without needing another country’s consent.
Externally, India decides its own foreign policy and is not under the control of any other state. Sovereignty in this sense is not diluted by joining the United Nations or signing a treaty, because such commitments are entered into by India’s own decision and can be argued, negotiated or withdrawn from.
Secular
Secularism, in the Indian constitutional sense, means that the state has no religion of its own and treats every religion with equal respect and equal protection of the law.
The Constitution establishes no official religion, and the state may not favour or fund one faith over another. Articles 25 to 28 guarantee freedom of conscience and the right to profess, practise and propagate religion, subject to public order, morality and health.
The Indian model differs from the stricter separation practised in some Western countries, where the state keeps out of religious affairs altogether. India’s state may intervene in religious practice — to abolish untouchability, for instance, or to open temples to all worshippers. The guiding idea is often expressed as sarva dharma sambhava, equal regard for all faiths, rather than indifference to all faiths.
Democratic
Democracy is a system in which those who govern hold authority from the governed and can be removed by them through regular, free elections.
Indian democracy is representative rather than direct: citizens do not vote on each law, but elect members to the Lok Sabha and to the State Legislative Assemblies, who legislate on their behalf and answer to them at the next election. Every citizen aged eighteen or above may vote, without distinction of caste, religion, sex, literacy or wealth.
Elections alone, however, do not make a democracy work. The Preamble’s promise is supported by enforceable Fundamental Rights, by courts that can strike down unconstitutional laws, and by the rule that government itself is bound by law.
Republic
A republic is a state whose head is elected, directly or indirectly, for a fixed term, and never inherits the office.
In India the head of state is the President, elected by an electoral college of the elected members of both Houses of Parliament and of the Legislative Assemblies of the states and of certain Union territories, for a term of five years. No office under the Constitution is hereditary, and every citizen who meets the stated qualifications may contest for the highest office.
7.1.5 The Objectives: Justice, Liberty, Equality and Fraternity
Having said what kind of state India is, the Preamble says what that state exists to secure. The four objectives are stated in a deliberate order, and the ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity echo the language of the French Revolution of 1789.
Justice
Justice means giving each person what is due to them, and removing conditions that deny people a fair share of social and material life. The Preamble names three forms of it.
Social justice means the absence of privileges attached to caste, colour, creed, race, religion, sex or place of birth, and the improvement of conditions for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, Other Backward Classes and women. Economic justice means reducing inequalities of income, wealth and property, and preventing discrimination on economic grounds.
Political justice means that every citizen has equal political rights: an equal vote, equal access to public office, and an equal voice in government. These three forms are secured through the Fundamental Rights and the Directive Principles, which the chapter takes up in section 7.3.
Liberty
Liberty is the absence of unreasonable restraint on a person’s thought and action, together with the conditions that let a person develop their capacities.
The Preamble secures liberty of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship. These are given legal shape in the Fundamental Rights and can be enforced in court if denied.
Liberty in the Constitution is not licence to do whatever one wishes. It is qualified: expression may be restricted in the interests of public order or the security of the state, and worship is subject to public order, morality and health. The argument in Indian politics is rarely about whether limits exist; it is about whether a particular limit is reasonable.
Equality
Equality means the absence of special privilege for any section of society, and the provision of adequate opportunity for every individual without discrimination.
The Preamble secures equality of status and of opportunity. Equality of status is given effect by the Fundamental Rights under Articles 14 to 18, which guarantee equality before the law, prohibit discrimination and abolish untouchability and titles.
Political equality rests on Articles 325 and 326, which bar exclusion from electoral rolls on grounds of religion, race, caste or sex and provide for elections on the basis of adult suffrage. Economic equality is pursued through the Directive Principles — Article 39, for example, directs the state to secure an adequate means of livelihood and equal pay for equal work for men and women alike.
Fraternity
Fraternity is a sense of common belonging among citizens strong enough to hold a diverse society together. It is the hardest of the four to legislate and, for that reason, the one the Preamble takes most trouble to explain.
The Preamble states that fraternity must assure two things: the dignity of the individual, and the unity and integrity of the nation. The word ‘integrity’ was added in 1976; ‘unity’ stood alone before that.
The Constitution supports fraternity by institutional means, notably single citizenship, which is examined in section 7.4. It also appeals to citizens directly: Article 51A lists among the Fundamental Duties the duty to promote harmony and the spirit of common brotherhood among all the people of India, transcending religious, linguistic and regional differences.
B. R. Ambedkar argued that the three ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity should not be treated as separate items. Liberty without equality, he held, produces the rule of the few; equality without liberty destroys individual initiative; and without fraternity neither can be sustained by law alone.
7.2 The Constitution as a Written Framework
The Preamble states the purpose. The rest of the document builds the machinery, and the design of that machinery is what the remaining sections of this chapter examine.
A constitution is the fundamental law of a state: the set of rules that establishes the organs of government, fixes and limits their powers, and defines the relationship between the government and the citizen. It stands above ordinary law, and an ordinary law that conflicts with it is invalid.
Every constitution answers two questions. How is power divided between different levels of government? And how is power divided between the government and those it governs? The features described below are the Indian answers.
7.2.1 Written and Comprehensive
The Indian Constitution is a wholly written document, debated and enacted by the Constituent Assembly. The Assembly first met on 9 December 1946 and adopted the finished text on 26 November 1949 — two years, eleven months and eighteen days of work.
It is also the longest written constitution in the world. At the time of adoption it contained 395 Articles arranged in 22 Parts, with 8 Schedules; amendment has since added further Parts, Articles and Schedules, and there are now 12 Schedules.
Why so long? Three reasons account for most of the bulk.
First, the document governs both the Union and the states. Most federal constitutions leave the states to write their own; India’s does the work for both levels in one text.
Second, the framers wrote for a society of great diversity, and included detailed special provisions — for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, for linguistic and religious minorities, for particular regions.
Third, they distrusted vagueness. Having watched colonial administration exercise wide discretion, they preferred to spell out powers and their limits in detail rather than leave them to convention.
Length carries a cost. A detailed constitution needs frequent amendment as circumstances change, and much of it deals with administrative matters that other countries leave to ordinary legislation.
7.2.2 Drawn from Several Sources
The Constituent Assembly did not design from a blank page. It studied the constitutions then in force around the world, and borrowed the arrangements that seemed to fit Indian conditions.
The single largest source was Indian: the Government of India Act, 1935, the last major constitutional statute of the colonial period. A great deal of the administrative structure, and much of the actual drafting, came from it.
Read the table as a record of choices, not of copying. The Assembly took the parliamentary executive from Britain but rejected Britain’s unwritten constitution and its sovereign Parliament. It took judicial review from the United States but rejected the American presidential executive.
The borrowings were also reshaped in transit. The Directive Principles came from Ireland, but their content — village panchayats, uniform civil code, prohibition, cottage industries — answers Indian debates, not Irish ones.
There is a limit to what a table of this kind can show. It lists where an idea was first seen; it cannot show how far the idea was altered before adoption, nor which of the Assembly’s decisions were original to it. Reading it as a list of imports would miss the point the framers themselves made: the arrangements were chosen because they suited India’s history, size and diversity.
7.2.3 Federal in Structure, Unitary in Spirit
Federalism is a system in which governmental power is divided by the constitution between a central government and regional governments, each acting directly on the citizen within its own sphere.
The alternative is a unitary system, in which all authority belongs to the central government, and any regional bodies exist only because the centre created them and may abolish them.
Article 1 of the Constitution describes India as a ‘Union of States’. The phrase was deliberate: the states did not come together by agreement and, unlike the American states, they have no right to secede.
The Constitution nonetheless contains the standard federal features. Power is divided between the Union and the states by the Seventh Schedule, which sets out a Union List, a State List and a Concurrent List on which both may legislate. There is a written and supreme constitution, an independent judiciary to decide disputes between the two levels, and a dual administration, central and state.
Alongside these sit provisions that pull decisively towards the centre.
For this reason scholars have described India’s arrangement as quasi-federal: a federal set-up in which two clear sets of government exist, but the centre holds the greater share of power. K. C. Wheare used that description; Granville Austin preferred ‘co-operative federalism’, arguing that the two levels were designed to work together rather than compete.
The design was deliberate. The Assembly wrote in the aftermath of Partition, with several hundred princely states being integrated and with fears of further fragmentation. It wanted regional diversity accommodated and national unity secured, and it accepted a strong centre as the price.
7.2.4 Partly Rigid and Partly Flexible
A rigid constitution is one that can be amended only by a special and difficult procedure. A flexible constitution can be amended by the ordinary law-making process, as in Britain, where an Act of Parliament can change the constitution.
India’s Constitution is neither. The framers graded the difficulty of amendment to the importance of the provision being changed, so the document is partly rigid and partly flexible.
Article 368 lays down two amendment procedures.
The first requires a special majority in each House of Parliament — a majority of the total membership of that House, and at least two-thirds of the members present and voting. Most of the Constitution, including the Fundamental Rights and the Directive Principles, is amended this way.
The second applies to provisions that affect the federal structure, such as the election of the President, the distribution of legislative powers, and the extent of the Union’s executive power. These need the same special majority, and in addition ratification by the legislatures of not less than half the states.
A third group of provisions can be altered by Parliament by a simple majority, through an ordinary law. Admitting a new state, altering state boundaries and names, and changes to certain Schedules fall here. Such changes are not counted as amendments under Article 368 at all.
Flowchart
FC 7.1 — How The Constitution Is Amended Caption: The route an amendment takes depends on which provision it seeks to change. Nodes: Amendment Bill introduced in either House of Parliament → Which provision does it affect? → [Branch A: matters outside Article 368, such as creating a new state] → passed by simple majority in both Houses → President’s assent → change takes effect, not counted as a constitutional amendment; [Branch B: most provisions] → special majority in each House → if either House fails to pass it, the Bill lapses; if both pass it → President’s assent, which cannot be refused → amendment takes effect; [Branch C: provisions affecting the federal structure] → special majority in each House → ratification by the legislatures of not less than half the states → if fewer than half ratify, the Bill fails; if half or more ratify → President’s assent → amendment takes effect
The design reflects a judgement about risk. Provisions that concern the balance between Union and states are protected most strongly, because a Union Parliament acting alone should not be able to rewrite the terms on which the states hold power.
The result is a document that has been amended more than a hundred times since 1950 — far more often than the American Constitution, and far less easily than an ordinary Indian statute.
7.3 Rights, Duties and Directive Principles
A constitution that only distributed power among institutions would still leave the citizen unprotected. The Indian Constitution therefore does three further things.
It guarantees certain rights against the state and makes them enforceable in court. It asks citizens to observe certain duties. And it instructs the state to work towards social and economic goals that no court can compel it to reach.
These three — Part III, Part IVA and Part IV — are best understood together, because each does what the others cannot.
Diagram
Fig. 7.3-1 Caption: Three Parts of the Constitution address rights, duties and the goals of government. Brief: Three vertical panels side by side. Panel 1: ‘Part III — Fundamental Rights, Articles 12 to 35 — enforceable in court’. Panel 2: ‘Part IVA — Fundamental Duties, Article 51A — not enforceable in court’. Panel 3: ‘Part IV — Directive Principles, Articles 36 to 51 — not enforceable in court’. Under Panel 1 write ‘Claims against the state’; under Panel 2 ‘Obligations of the citizen’; under Panel 3 ‘Instructions to the state’. Keep the panels equal in size.
7.3.1 Fundamental Rights and Fundamental Duties
Fundamental Rights are the basic freedoms guaranteed by Part III of the Constitution, which the state may not violate and which a citizen can enforce directly in court. They are contained in Articles 12 to 35, and are often called the Indian Bill of Rights.
What makes them fundamental is not that they are important — many things are important — but that they are justiciable. A right is justiciable when a person denied it can approach a court and obtain a remedy.
There are six Fundamental Rights.
- Right to Equality, Articles 14 to 18, covering equality before the law, prohibition of discrimination, equality of opportunity in public employment, abolition of untouchability and abolition of titles.
- Right to Freedom, Articles 19 to 22, covering the six freedoms including speech and expression, protection of life and personal liberty, the right to education for children aged six to fourteen under Article 21A, and protection against arbitrary arrest and detention.
- Right against Exploitation, Articles 23 and 24, prohibiting trafficking, forced labour, and the employment of children below fourteen in factories, mines and other hazardous work.
- Right to Freedom of Religion, Articles 25 to 28.
- Cultural and Educational Rights, Articles 29 and 30, protecting the language, script and culture of minorities and their right to establish and administer educational institutions.
- Right to Constitutional Remedies, Article 32, which allows a citizen to move the Supreme Court directly when a Fundamental Right is denied.
The list has changed once. The Constitution originally guaranteed seven Fundamental Rights, including a right to property. The Constitution (Forty-fourth Amendment) Act, 1978 removed property from Part III, leaving six; property remains a constitutional right under Article 300A, but it can no longer be enforced under Article 32.
That last point shows why Article 32 matters so much. A right without a remedy is an assurance, not a guarantee.
Rights are also not absolute. Every freedom in Article 19 is subject to restrictions that the Constitution itself permits — in the interests of public order, decency, the sovereignty of India and similar grounds. Whether a particular restriction is reasonable is a question the courts decide, case by case.
The Duties Of The Citizen
The Constitution as adopted in 1949 listed rights but no duties. Fundamental Duties were added later, in Part IVA, by the Constitution (Forty-second Amendment) Act, 1976, following the recommendation of the Swaran Singh Committee.
Article 51A now lists eleven duties of every citizen. They include abiding by the Constitution and respecting the National Flag and the National Anthem; upholding the sovereignty, unity and integrity of India; promoting harmony and common brotherhood across religious, linguistic and regional lines; renouncing practices derogatory to the dignity of women; protecting the natural environment; developing scientific temper and the spirit of inquiry; and safeguarding public property and abjuring violence.
The eleventh duty, added by the Constitution (Eighty-sixth Amendment) Act, 2002, requires a parent or guardian to provide opportunities for education to a child between the ages of six and fourteen.
The Fundamental Duties are not enforceable by the courts. No citizen can be prosecuted for failing to develop a scientific temper. Their function is different: they state publicly what the Constitution expects of citizens, and courts may take them into account when deciding whether a law that restricts a right serves a legitimate purpose.
7.3.2 Directive Principles of State Policy
The Directive Principles of State Policy are instructions to the state, set out in Part IV of the Constitution, Articles 36 to 51, directing it to work towards specified social and economic goals. The idea was taken from the Constitution of Ireland.
Article 37 states their status precisely. The Directive Principles are not enforceable by any court, and yet they are declared fundamental in the governance of the country, and it is the duty of the state to apply them in making laws.
That combination looks odd until one sees the problem the framers faced. In 1949 India was overwhelmingly poor and largely unlettered. A right to employment or to adequate nutrition could have been written into Part III, but no court could have delivered it, and an unkeepable guarantee would have discredited the enforceable ones.
So the framers separated what the state must not do to a citizen, which is justiciable, from what the state should do for citizens, which depends on resources and therefore on politics.
The Principles cover a wide field. Article 40 directs the state to organise village panchayats as units of self-government. Article 47 directs it to raise nutrition levels and the standard of living, and to improve public health. Article 48A, added in 1976, directs it to protect and improve the environment and to safeguard forests and wildlife.
Taken together, the Directive Principles commit India to becoming a welfare state — a state that accepts responsibility for the basic economic and social well-being of its citizens, rather than confining itself to defence, law and order.
Because they cannot be enforced, their real force is political. A government is answerable at the next election for what it has done about them, and opposition parties, courts and citizens use them as a standard of judgement. Several have also been converted into enforceable law by the ordinary legislative route.
That sequence is the answer to the commonest criticism of Part IV — that it is a list of pious wishes. Some Directive Principles have remained unimplemented for seventy years; others have become enforceable rights. Which of the two happens is decided by politics, not by the Constitution.
7.4 The Framework of Representative Government
Deciding that a country will be democratic settles very little. It leaves open who forms the government, how that government can be removed, who counts as a citizen, how the legislature is built, and who is allowed to vote.
The Constitution answers each of these questions in a particular way, and each answer was chosen over a serious alternative.
7.4.1 Parliamentary Form of Government
The Constituent Assembly had two working models before it. The British parliamentary system makes the executive part of the legislature and answerable to it. The American presidential system elects the executive separately and keeps the two apart.
India chose the parliamentary form, at the Union and in every state. Six features define it.
First, there is a nominal head of state and a real executive. The President of India is the constitutional head, but the executive power is exercised by the Union Council of Ministers headed by the Prime Minister. In the states, the Governor is the nominal head and the Council of Ministers under the Chief Minister the real executive.
Second, the government is formed by the party or coalition that commands a majority in the Lok Sabha.
Third, ministers are members of the legislature. A person appointed minister who is not already a member must become one within six months.
Fourth, the executive is bound by collective responsibility: the Council of Ministers stands or falls together and is answerable as a body to the Lok Sabha. If the House passes a motion of no confidence, the whole Council must resign, not merely the minister who lost the argument.
Fifth, the Prime Minister leads — as the link between the Council and the President, as chairman of the Cabinet, and as leader of the House.
Sixth, the lower House can be dissolved before its term ends, and fresh elections held.
Flowchart
FC 7.2 — How A Government Is Formed And How It Falls Caption: The chain of responsibility that ties the executive to the elected House. Nodes: General election to the Lok Sabha → does any party or coalition command a majority? → [If yes] its leader is appointed Prime Minister → Council of Ministers appointed on the Prime Minister’s advice → government continues while it retains the confidence of the House → [If a no-confidence motion is passed] the entire Council of Ministers resigns → either an alternative government that can command a majority is formed, or the House is dissolved and fresh elections are held; [If no party or coalition commands a majority at the outset] parties negotiate to form a coalition, failing which the House is dissolved and fresh elections are held
The Assembly’s reasoning was practical. A presidential executive with a fixed term can survive for years after losing public support, and a deadlock between president and legislature has no constitutional exit. A parliamentary executive can be removed the moment it loses its majority.
The choice also carried a cost the Assembly accepted. A government dependent on a majority is less stable, and coalition politics can make it shorter-lived still.
The Indian system is modelled on the British, but differs from it in two important ways.
The British Parliament is legally sovereign: it can make or unmake any law, and no court may set it aside. The Indian Parliament works under a written Constitution, and a law it passes can be struck down by the courts if it conflicts with that Constitution. Second, India’s head of state is elected for a fixed term; Britain’s is hereditary.
7.4.2 Single Citizenship
India is federal, with two levels of government, and a federation could reasonably give a person two citizenships — one of the country, one of the state. The United States does exactly that.
The Constitution instead provides single citizenship: every Indian is a citizen of India alone, and of no state. Citizenship is dealt with in Part II of the Constitution and by laws made by Parliament under it.
The consequence is practical and important. A person born in one state who moves to another carries the same political and civil rights, and cannot be treated as an outsider in law. There is one body of rights for one people.
The framers chose this deliberately, and for the reason the Preamble states. In a country divided by language, religion, caste and region, a second, state-level citizenship would have given legal form to those divisions.
Single citizenship is not, however, complete uniformity. The Constitution permits Parliament to prescribe residence within a state as a condition for certain state employment, and Part XXI contains special provisions for particular states and regions. The principle is one citizenship; the exceptions are narrow and constitutionally specified.
7.4.3 A Bicameral Union Parliament
A bicameral legislature is one with two chambers, each of which must ordinarily agree before a law is passed. The Constitution establishes such a legislature at the Union level and names it Parliament.
The Lok Sabha, or House of the People, is directly elected by the voters from territorial constituencies and represents the people of India. Its maximum strength is 550 members, and it sits for five years unless dissolved earlier.
The Rajya Sabha, or Council of States, is indirectly elected. Its members are chosen by the elected members of the State Legislative Assemblies, so it represents the states of the Union. Its maximum strength is 250, of whom twelve are nominated by the President for distinction in literature, science, art or social service.
The two Houses differ in one further respect that explains why a second chamber was wanted. The Rajya Sabha is a permanent body. It is never dissolved; one-third of its members retire every two years, so a portion of the House always continues.
Two purposes lie behind bicameralism. A second chamber gives the states a voice at the Union level, which a directly elected House organised by population cannot do. It also provides a revising chamber — a body that examines legislation a second time, at a slight distance from the pressure that produced it.
The arrangement is not confined to the Union. Some states have a Legislative Council alongside their Legislative Assembly; most have only an Assembly, and the Constitution allows a state to create or abolish its Council.
7.4.4 Universal Adult Franchise
Universal adult franchise is the rule that every adult citizen has the right to vote, regardless of property, education, income, caste, religion or sex. Article 326 establishes it for elections to the Lok Sabha and to the State Legislative Assemblies.
Every citizen who is not less than eighteen years of age may vote. The voting age was twenty-one until the Constitution (Sixty-first Amendment) Act, 1988 lowered it to eighteen, with effect from 1989.
To see how large a decision this was, compare it with the history elsewhere. Britain extended the franchise in stages across a century, adding property-holders, then working men, then women, then younger women. The United States adopted universal adult suffrage in law but restricted it in practice for decades.
India granted it at once, in 1950, in a society where most adults were poor and a majority could not read. Many observers at the time thought this reckless. The framers’ answer was that a state claiming its authority from the people could not first decide which people counted.
Elections on this scale need an authority that neither government can control. Article 324 vests the superintendence, direction and control of elections in an Election Commission independent of both the Union and the states.
Universal adult franchise also does the political work the Preamble promises. It is the practical form of political justice and of equality of status: at the polling booth, a landowner and a landless labourer cast one vote each, and the votes weigh the same.
That equality is confined to the moment of voting. It does not by itself equalise the money spent on a campaign, the coverage a candidate receives, or the pressures a voter faces before reaching the booth — which is why the Constitution supports the vote with rights, an independent Election Commission and courts that can hear election disputes.
7.5 The Judiciary and Judicial Review
A written constitution that limits government is only as good as the body that enforces the limits. Someone must be able to tell Parliament that a law it has passed is invalid, and a Chief Minister that an order has exceeded his authority.
In India that body is the judiciary. Two features of the Constitution equip it for the task: the courts are organised as a single independent system, and they hold the power to test laws against the Constitution.
7.5.1 A Single, Integrated and Independent Judiciary
The Constitution establishes one judicial system for the whole country. The Supreme Court of India sits at the apex, High Courts at the level of the states, and below each High Court a hierarchy of district and subordinate courts.
This single system enforces both Union laws and state laws. A district court in any state applies central legislation and state legislation alike, and appeals from it travel up the same ladder to the High Court and, in the appropriate cases, to the Supreme Court.
Diagram
Fig. 7.5-1 Caption: One ladder of courts enforces the laws of both the Union and the states. Brief: A three-tier pyramid. Top tier ‘Supreme Court of India’. Middle tier ‘High Courts’. Base tier ‘District and subordinate courts’. Draw a single upward arrow through all three labelled ‘Appeals’. To one side, a bracket spanning all three tiers labelled ‘Enforces Union laws and state laws’. Plain lines only, no ornament.
The contrast with the United States is instructive. There, federal courts and state courts run as two parallel systems, each with its own jurisdiction. India’s framers rejected that arrangement as a source of conflict and confusion, and as an added strain on the unity they were trying to secure.
An integrated judiciary would be worth little if the judges depended on the government they must sometimes rule against. The Constitution therefore protects judicial independence by several separate devices.
Judges are appointed by the President, and only persons with high legal qualifications and experience are eligible. They hold office until a fixed retiring age — sixty-five in the Supreme Court, sixty-two in the High Courts — and so do not serve at the government’s pleasure.
A judge of the Supreme Court can be removed only for proved misbehaviour or incapacity, by an address passed by each House of Parliament by a special majority and presented to the President in the same session. No judge of the Supreme Court has ever been removed by this process.
Their salaries and allowances are charged on the Consolidated Fund of India, so Parliament does not vote on them each year and cannot use money as leverage. Their conduct may not be discussed in Parliament except on a motion for removal. The Supreme Court appoints its own staff and controls its own administration.
One provision protects independence at the other end of a career: a retired judge of the Supreme Court may not plead or act before any court or authority within India. A judge nearing retirement therefore has no future practice to protect.
None of this makes judges infallible, and the method of appointing them has itself been argued over, amended and litigated. What the provisions secure is narrower and still substantial: a judge deciding against the government of the day risks neither salary, tenure nor office.
7.5.2 Judicial Review
Judicial review is the power of the courts to examine the constitutional validity of laws made by legislatures and of orders issued by the executive, and to declare invalid those that conflict with the Constitution.
It applies to both levels of government, Union and state. If a court finds a law or an order to be ultra vires — beyond the powers granted by the Constitution — it declares it unconstitutional, and the law or order is void and of no legal effect.
The power was drawn from the United States, where it was established by the courts themselves. In India it did not have to be inferred, because the Constitution provides for it in terms.
Two further Articles supply the machinery. Article 32 allows a citizen to move the Supreme Court directly when a Fundamental Right is denied, and Article 226 gives the High Courts a wider power to issue writs.
Judicial review is not confined to rights. A court may also strike down a law because the legislature that passed it had no authority over the subject — a state legislating on a Union List subject, for instance. In a federation, someone must police the boundary between the two lists, and here the courts do it.
The Question Judicial Review Raises
Every country with judicial review faces the same objection, and it is a serious one. Judges are appointed, not elected, and cannot be voted out. Legislators are chosen by the people and answerable to them at the next election. Why should the unelected body have the last word?
The Indian answer runs roughly as follows. A majority in Parliament represents the people at a given moment; the Constitution represents the people’s more considered decision about the limits within which any majority must work. Reviewing a law against the Constitution is not overriding the people — it is holding a temporary majority to what the people settled earlier.
The result is a balance rather than a hierarchy. Parliament retains the authority to make law and to amend most of the Constitution. The courts retain the authority to test what Parliament does against the Constitution’s text. Neither is supreme in the sense in which the British Parliament is supreme.
That balance is not fixed once and for all. Where a court is thought to have entered the space properly belonging to elected government, the criticism is that it has substituted its own judgement for a policy choice the voters should decide. Where a court declines to intervene against a plain violation of rights, the criticism is the opposite. Both criticisms have been made in India, sometimes about the same court in the same decade.
7.6 Emergency Powers and Special Provisions
The features described so far assume normal times. Two sets of provisions deal with what is not normal: a crisis that threatens the state, and an inequality older than the state itself.
They are placed together here because they raise the same question in opposite forms. Both allow the ordinary constitutional rules to be departed from, and both must justify the departure.
7.6.1 Emergency Provisions
Articles 352 to 360, in Part XVIII of the Constitution, empower the government to act with special powers during an emergency. The framers took the idea from the Weimar Constitution of Germany, listed among the sources in section 7.2.
Their reasoning was that a constitution designed only for peacetime will be suspended altogether when a real crisis arrives. It is safer to provide for the crisis inside the document, with stated conditions and stated limits, than to leave the government to improvise outside it.
The Constitution recognises three kinds of emergency.
A National Emergency under Article 352 may be proclaimed by the President if he is satisfied that the security of India or of any part of it is threatened by war, external aggression or armed rebellion. During such a proclamation, Parliament may legislate on subjects in the State List, and certain Fundamental Rights may be suspended.
President’s Rule under Article 356 is the assumption of a state’s government by the Union when the President is satisfied that the government of that state cannot be carried on in accordance with the Constitution. The state’s executive power is exercised by the Governor on the Union’s behalf, and Parliament legislates for the state.
A Financial Emergency under Article 360 may be proclaimed if the financial stability or credit of India or of any part of it is threatened. It has never been proclaimed.
During any emergency, power moves in one direction: from the states to the Union, and within the Union from Parliament to the executive.
A National Emergency has been proclaimed three times — during the conflict with China in 1962, during the conflict with Pakistan in 1971, and in June 1975 on the ground of internal disturbance. The third was different in kind from the first two. It was declared in the absence of external attack; opposition leaders were detained without trial, the press was placed under censorship, and Fundamental Rights were suspended. It was lifted in 1977, and elections were then held.
The Constitution was amended in response.
Those safeguards are worth stating exactly, because they show what the framers of the amendment thought had gone wrong. A proclamation must now rest on the written recommendation of the Union Cabinet, not on advice tendered by one person. It must be approved by both Houses of Parliament, by a special majority, within a month. It continues for six months at a time and needs fresh approval to go further. The Lok Sabha may revoke it by a simple majority. And the right to life and personal liberty under Article 21, along with the protection under Article 20 in respect of conviction for offences, cannot be suspended at all.
Article 356 raises a different problem. It is addressed to the breakdown of constitutional machinery in a state, and the judgement that a breakdown has occurred is made at the Centre — about a state government that may belong to a rival party.
Emergency provisions are the hardest part of any constitution to judge. They exist because a state unable to act in a crisis may not survive it. They are dangerous because the same powers, used against political opponents rather than against a genuine threat, dismantle the very arrangements they were meant to protect.
7.6.2 Special Provisions for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes
The Constitution guarantees equality of status and opportunity to every citizen. The framers also knew that the guarantee alone would not undo centuries in which caste had determined where a person could live, what work they could do, and whether they could enter a temple, a school or a well.
Formal equality treats everyone the same from today onward. It does not touch inequalities that were already in place when the rule changed. The Constitution therefore contains special provisions for the communities listed in the official Schedules as Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.
Reservation is the setting aside of a proportion of seats, posts or places for members of specified communities, so that groups historically excluded from them are represented.
Seats are reserved for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in the Lok Sabha under Article 330 and in the State Legislative Assemblies under Article 332. Reservation also applies in panchayats and municipalities, and it extends to appointments to public services and to admission to educational institutions.
The Constitution supports these with further machinery. Untouchability is abolished by Article 17. Article 46 directs the state to promote the educational and economic interests of the weaker sections. The Fifth and Sixth Schedules provide separate arrangements for the administration of Scheduled Areas and tribal areas.
Reservation of seats in the legislatures was not meant to be permanent. Article 334 originally fixed a period of ten years, and Parliament has extended it by amendment several times; the present extension, made in 2019, runs to 2030. Reservation in public employment and in education carries no such fixed end date.
Whether reservation should continue, in what form and for how long, is one of the most argued questions in Indian politics. The arguments on both sides can be stated plainly.
Those who defend it hold that exclusion was organised and lasted for centuries, that its effects persist in landholding, literacy and social treatment, and that without reserved seats and posts the excluded would remain absent from the institutions that make decisions about them.
Those who criticise it hold that a Constitution promising equality should not distribute opportunity by birth at all, that benefits reach the better-off within a listed community first, and that a measure justified as temporary has been extended repeatedly.
The disagreement is not really about whether the exclusion happened; both sides accept that it did. It is about what a remedy for it should look like, and how anyone would know when the remedy had worked.
7.7 Summary
The Preamble is the introductory statement of the Constitution. It grants no enforceable right by itself, but fixes the purposes against which the rest of the document is read, and courts use it to choose between rival readings of an Article.
It records four things: the source of the Constitution’s authority, the nature of the Indian state, the objectives that state must secure, and the date of adoption, 26 November 1949. The Constitution came into force on 26 January 1950.
The Preamble grew out of the Objectives Resolution, moved by Jawaharlal Nehru on 13 December 1946 and adopted by the Constituent Assembly on 22 January 1947. The Preamble itself has been amended once, in 1976, which added ‘Socialist’, ‘Secular’ and ‘integrity’.
‘We, the people of India’ locates authority in the people, not in any outside power. This is popular sovereignty: political power originates with the people, and governments hold it on trust.
The five words describing the state each rule something out. Sovereign — no external authority. Socialist — a mixed economy committed to reducing inequality, pursued democratically. Secular — no state religion, and equal respect and equal legal protection for all faiths. Democratic — rulers hold authority from the governed and can be removed by them. Republic — an elected head of state, for a fixed term, never hereditary.
The four objectives are justice in its social, economic and political forms; liberty of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship; equality of status and of opportunity; and fraternity, which must assure the dignity of the individual and the unity and integrity of the nation.
The Constitution is written and comprehensive because it governs both the Union and the states, provides in detail for a diverse society, and prefers spelt-out powers to convention. It contained 395 Articles in 22 Parts with 8 Schedules at adoption, and is the longest written constitution in the world.
It was drawn from several sources — most heavily from the Government of India Act, 1935, and also from Britain, the United States, Ireland, Canada, Australia, the Soviet Union, France and Weimar Germany. The borrowings were chosen and reshaped to fit Indian conditions, not copied.
India is federal in structure and unitary in spirit. Power is genuinely divided by the Seventh Schedule and protected by an independent judiciary, but residuary powers, centrally appointed Governors, single citizenship, All-India Services and emergency provisions let the Centre prevail. Scholars have called the result quasi-federal.
The Constitution is partly rigid and partly flexible. Article 368 provides a special majority procedure for most provisions, and special majority plus ratification by half the states for provisions affecting the federal structure. A third group can be altered by simple majority outside Article 368 altogether.
Fundamental Rights, in Part III, are justiciable: six rights, enforceable in court, with Article 32 as the remedy that makes the rest effective. Fundamental Duties, added to Part IVA in 1976, list eleven obligations of the citizen and are not enforceable.
Directive Principles, in Part IV, are declared fundamental to governance yet are not enforceable by any court. They separate what the state must not do to a citizen from what it should do for citizens, and commit India to becoming a welfare state. Their force is political, and several have been converted into enforceable law.
The government is parliamentary: a nominal head of state, a real executive drawn from the legislature, collective responsibility to the Lok Sabha, and a dissolvable lower House. Unlike Britain’s, India’s Parliament is not sovereign — it works under a written Constitution subject to judicial review.
Citizenship is single, so a citizen carries the same rights in every state. Parliament is bicameral: a directly elected Lok Sabha representing the people, and an indirectly elected, permanent Rajya Sabha representing the states.
Universal adult franchise was granted at once in 1950, to every adult regardless of property, literacy, caste, religion or sex, and the voting age was lowered to eighteen in 1988. Article 324 places elections under an independent Election Commission.
The judiciary is single, integrated and independent: one ladder of courts enforcing Union and state law alike, with tenure, salary and post-retirement rules designed so that a judge ruling against the government risks nothing.
Judicial review lets the courts declare a law or executive order ultra vires and void when it conflicts with the Constitution. It polices both the limits on power set by Part III and the boundary between Union and state lists.
Emergency provisions in Articles 352 to 360 recognise a National Emergency, President’s Rule in a state, and a Financial Emergency, which has never been proclaimed. After the Emergency of 1975–77, the 44th Amendment, 1978 tightened the conditions and placed Articles 20 and 21 beyond suspension.
Special provisions for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes — reserved seats in the legislatures and local bodies, reservation in services and education, the abolition of untouchability, and separate administrative arrangements under the Fifth and Sixth Schedules — address inequalities that formal equality alone leaves untouched.
The Arguments In One Place
The chapter’s central claim is that the Constitution’s features are answers to problems, and that each answer was chosen over a workable alternative — a strong Centre over a looser federation, a parliamentary executive over a presidential one, graded amendment over uniform rigidity, judicial review over parliamentary supremacy.
The strongest position against it is that these choices concentrate power. Residuary powers, appointed Governors, emergency provisions and Parliament’s power over state boundaries all point one way, and a document that entrusts so much to the Centre may protect unity at the cost of the diversity it claims to accommodate.
The chapter’s reply is that the same document supplies the correctives: justiciable rights, an independent judiciary, an independent Election Commission, and an electorate that has removed governments. Whether the correctives are sufficient is not settled by the text; it is settled, repeatedly, by politics.
7.8 Key Terms
Bicameral legislature — a legislature with two chambers, both of which must ordinarily agree before a law is passed.
Collective responsibility — the rule that the Council of Ministers is answerable to the Lok Sabha as a body, and resigns together if it loses the House’s confidence.
Constitution — the fundamental law of a state, which establishes the organs of government, fixes and limits their powers, and defines the relationship between government and citizen.
Democracy — a system in which those who govern hold authority from the governed and can be removed by them through regular, free elections.
Directive Principles of State Policy — instructions to the state in Part IV of the Constitution, directing it towards specified social and economic goals; not enforceable in court.
Equality — the absence of special privilege for any section of society, and adequate opportunity for every individual without discrimination.
Federalism — a system in which the constitution divides governmental power between a central government and regional governments, each acting directly on the citizen within its own sphere.
Fraternity — a sense of common belonging among citizens, which the Preamble requires to assure the dignity of the individual and the unity and integrity of the nation.
Fundamental Duties — the eleven obligations of the citizen listed in Article 51A, Part IVA of the Constitution; not enforceable by the courts.
Fundamental Rights — the basic freedoms guaranteed by Part III of the Constitution, which the state may not violate and which a citizen can enforce directly in court.
Judicial review — the power of the courts to examine the constitutional validity of laws and executive orders, and to declare void those that conflict with the Constitution.
Justice — giving each person what is due to them, and removing conditions that deny people a fair share of social and material life; the Preamble names its social, economic and political forms.
Justiciable — capable of being enforced in a court, so that a person denied the entitlement can obtain a remedy.
Liberty — the absence of unreasonable restraint on a person’s thought and action, together with the conditions that let a person develop their capacities.
Popular sovereignty — the claim that all political power originates with the people, and that governments hold it on trust and remain answerable for its use.
Preamble — the introductory statement at the head of a constitution, declaring who is giving it, what kind of state it creates, and what that state is meant to secure.
President’s Rule — the assumption of a state’s government by the Union under Article 356, when the President is satisfied that the state cannot be governed in accordance with the Constitution.
Quasi-federal — a federal set-up in which two clear sets of government exist, but the central government holds the greater share of power.
Republic — a state whose head is elected, directly or indirectly, for a fixed term, and never inherits the office.
Reservation — the setting aside of a proportion of seats, posts or places for members of specified communities, so that groups historically excluded from them are represented.
Residuary powers — the power to legislate on subjects not listed in any of the three Lists; under the Indian Constitution these belong to the Union.
Secularism — in the Indian constitutional sense, the principle that the state has no religion of its own and treats every religion with equal respect and equal protection of the law.
Single citizenship — the rule that every Indian is a citizen of India alone and of no state, so that the same rights are carried into every part of the country.
Sovereignty — the supreme authority within a state to make and enforce law, subject to no higher earthly power.
Special majority — the majority required under Article 368 for most constitutional amendments: a majority of the total membership of each House, and at least two-thirds of those present and voting.
Universal adult franchise — the rule that every adult citizen has the right to vote, regardless of property, education, income, caste, religion or sex.
Welfare state — a state that accepts responsibility for the basic economic and social well-being of its citizens, rather than confining itself to defence, law and order.
7.9 Points to Ponder
The Preamble cannot be enforced in court, yet it is quoted more often than most Articles. Does a statement that changes how a document is read have legal force, even if no one can sue upon it?
If a constitution can be amended, in what sense does it bind the Parliament that amends it?
The Constitution says authority comes from ‘we, the people’, but the people alive today did not adopt it. What makes a founding document binding on a generation that had no part in writing it?
Directive Principles are declared fundamental to governance and are simultaneously unenforceable. Is an obligation that no court can compel still an obligation, or only a recommendation?
Emergency powers exist because a state unable to act in a crisis may not survive one. Can a constitution be designed so that such powers are available against a real threat but unusable against political opponents?
Formal equality treats everyone the same from today onward; special provisions treat people differently because of what happened before today. Can both be expressions of the same idea of equality, or must one give way to the other?
7.10 Objective Questions
- The Preamble to the Constitution of India traces the authority of the Constitution to—
- the British Parliament
- the Constituent Assembly’s Drafting Committee
- the people of India
- the President of India [1 mark]
- The words ‘Socialist’ and ‘Secular’ were inserted into the Preamble by the—
- Forty-second Amendment
- Forty-fourth Amendment
- Sixty-first Amendment
- Eighty-sixth Amendment [1 mark]
- An amendment affecting the distribution of legislative powers between the Union and the states requires—
- a simple majority in both Houses of Parliament
- a special majority in both Houses of Parliament
- a special majority in both Houses, and ratification by the legislatures of not less than half the states
- the consent of every state legislature [1 mark]
- Which of the following is a unitary feature of the Indian Constitution?
- Division of subjects into three Lists
- An independent judiciary to settle Centre–state disputes
- Residuary powers vested in the Union
- A dual administration, central and state [1 mark]
- Assertion (A): The Directive Principles of State Policy are described as fundamental in the governance of the country. Reason (R): The Directive Principles can be enforced by any court in India.
- Both A and R are true and R is the correct explanation of A.
- Both A and R are true but R is not the correct explanation of A.
- A is true and R is false.
- A is false and R is true. [1 mark]
- Assertion (A): The Indian Parliament is not a sovereign body in the sense in which the British Parliament is. Reason (R): Laws made by the Indian Parliament can be examined by the courts against a written Constitution.
- Both A and R are true and R is the correct explanation of A.
- Both A and R are true but R is not the correct explanation of A.
- A is true and R is false.
- A is false and R is true. [1 mark]
- Match the feature in Column A with the source from which it was drawn, in Column B. [1 mark]
| Column A | Column B |
|---|---|
| a. Directive Principles of State Policy | i. Government of India Act, 1935 |
| b. Cabinet system and parliamentary privileges | ii. Ireland |
| c. Office of the Governor and emergency provisions | iii. United States of America |
| d. Judicial review and impeachment of the President | iv. United Kingdom |
Fill in the blank: The right of a citizen to move the Supreme Court directly for the enforcement of a Fundamental Right is guaranteed by Article ________. (19, 21, 32) [1 mark]
Fill in the blank: The voting age in India was lowered from twenty-one years to eighteen years by the ________ Amendment Act. (Forty-fourth, Sixty-first, Eighty-sixth) [1 mark]
State whether the following statement is true or false: A Financial Emergency under Article 360 has been proclaimed in India on three occasions. [1 mark]
State whether the following statement is true or false: The Fundamental Duties listed in Article 51A can be enforced by the courts against a citizen who neglects them. [1 mark]
7.11 Check Your Concepts
Define popular sovereignty. [2 marks]
State the four things recorded in the Preamble to the Constitution of India. [2 marks]
What is meant by single citizenship? Give one advantage claimed for it. [2 marks]
Differentiate between a rigid constitution and a flexible constitution. [3 marks]
Give three reasons why the Indian Constitution is so much longer than most written constitutions. [3 marks]
Explain briefly why the Constitution provides for a bicameral Union Parliament. [3 marks]
Explain, with an example, what the word ‘Secular’ in the Preamble requires of the Indian state. [4 marks]
Describe any four provisions of the Constitution that secure the independence of the judiciary. [4 marks]
Evaluate the claim that the Directive Principles of State Policy are no more than a list of pious wishes. [4 marks]
Why did the framers make the Fundamental Rights justiciable but the Directive Principles non-justiciable? [4 marks]
‘India is federal in structure but unitary in spirit.’ Discuss this statement with reference to the federal and unitary features of the Constitution, and state the difficulty the framers were trying to solve. [6 marks]
Describe the three kinds of emergency provided for in the Constitution, and explain the safeguards introduced by the Constitution (Forty-fourth Amendment) Act, 1978. [6 marks]
Explain the meaning of judicial review, and discuss the main objection made to it along with the answer usually given to that objection. [6 marks]
7.12 Source & Passage-Based Questions
- A state legislature passes a law prohibiting the sale of a particular class of goods within the state, and the law is challenged in the High Court. The petitioners argue two things: first, that trade of this kind falls on a List over which only Parliament may legislate; and second, that the law violates a Fundamental Right. The Court hears both arguments and sets the law aside.
- Name the power the Court has exercised, and define it. [2 marks]
- The two arguments rest on two different kinds of constitutional limit. Explain the difference between them. [3 marks]
- State one thing this decision cannot tell us about how the law was working in practice. [1 mark]
- Study the following description of a cartoon. A large book labelled ‘The Constitution’ lies open on a table. Two figures stand on either side, each pulling one cover towards themselves. One wears a legislator’s sash marked ‘Elected’; the other wears a judge’s robe marked ‘Appointed’. Both are shown smiling, and neither has let go. The caption reads: ‘Whose book is it?’
- Which constitutional relationship is the cartoonist commenting on? [2 marks]
- Explain the claim the cartoonist is making by drawing neither figure as winning. [3 marks]
- State one thing a cartoon of this kind cannot show about the relationship it depicts. [1 mark]
- A newly created panchayat in a district holds its first meeting. Seats on it have been reserved for members of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. At the meeting, one member argues that reservation should have ended long ago, since the Constitution guarantees equality to everyone; another replies that equality on paper does not by itself undo what happened before the Constitution was written.
- Define reservation as the Constitution uses the idea. [2 marks]
- Set out the strongest argument on each side of this disagreement. [4 marks]
- What would a person need to know in order to decide whether the remedy had done its work? [2 marks]
- A government minister, defending a decision taken during a proclaimed emergency, states in the legislature: ‘A state that cannot act decisively when it is threatened will not be in a position to protect anybody’s rights afterwards.’ An opposition member replies that emergency powers have historically been used most easily against those who criticise the government.
- Identify the constitutional provisions the exchange concerns, and state where in the Constitution they are found. [2 marks]
- Explain why the framers chose to provide for emergencies within the Constitution rather than leave them out of it. [3 marks]
- Name any two safeguards that now limit the use of these powers. [2 marks]
Socialist
The word was inserted in 1976, though the idea was already present in the Directive Principles of State Policy, discussed later in this chapter. Indian socialism has never meant state ownership of all production.
What it means in practice is a mixed economy: public and private sectors operate side by side, with the state active in areas such as defence, banking and energy, and private enterprise permitted elsewhere. It also commits the state to reducing inequalities of income and opportunity, through measures such as land reform, welfare schemes and reservation in public employment.
This is usually described as democratic socialism — redistribution pursued through elections, legislation and the courts, not through the abolition of private property or of political competition.