Chapter 9: Directive Principles of State Policy
In the closing months of 1948, the Constituent Assembly reached a part of the Draft Constitution that troubled many of its members.
Part III of the draft promised rights a citizen could take to court. Part IV promised something different: a living wage, free legal aid, work, education, village self-government, humane conditions of labour. These were the things a newly independent and desperately poor country most urgently needed. Yet the draft said plainly that no court could enforce any of them.
Several members objected. If the Constitution could guarantee free speech, why could it not guarantee a living wage? Some wanted deadlines written in. Others dismissed the whole Part as pious sentiment that would never bind anybody.
B. R. Ambedkar, who chaired the Drafting Committee, defended the design. A poor state, he argued, could not promise in court what it could not yet pay for. But the promises were not empty. Every government would have to explain to the voters what it had done about them.
The Assembly accepted the argument. Part IV went into the Constitution as instructions to the State that no judge would enforce and no government could quite ignore.
Seventy-five years later, that unusual bargain is still working itself out — in Parliament, in the Supreme Court, and in the schemes whose names appear on ration cards and school walls across India.
Diagram
Fig. 9.0-1 Caption: The Constitution divides its promises into rights the courts enforce and directions the government must pursue. Brief: Two facing columns under a single Constitution banner. Left column headed ‘Part III — Fundamental Rights (Articles 12–35)’, with a gavel icon and the label ‘enforceable in court’. Right column headed ‘Part IV — Directive Principles of State Policy (Articles 36–51)’, with a ballot-box icon and the label ‘answerable to the voter’. A double-headed arrow between the columns labelled ‘both bind the State’. No shading suggesting one is superior.
9.1 What Are the Directive Principles of State Policy?
The Directive Principles of State Policy are instructions written into the Constitution telling the State what goals its laws and policies should pursue. They are contained in Part IV of the Constitution, in Articles 36 to 51.
Part III of the Constitution had already listed the Fundamental Rights — the guarantees a citizen may defend in a court of law. Part IV does something different. It does not hand the citizen a weapon against the State; it hands the State a list of tasks.
Those tasks are largely social and economic. A living wage for workers, free legal aid for the poor, education for children, village self-government, protection of the environment, peace with other nations — these are the kinds of goals Part IV sets out.
Who Is Bound By Part IV
Article 36 settles who is being instructed. For the purposes of Part IV, the term ‘State’ carries the same wide meaning it has in Part III.
It covers Parliament and the Union government, every state legislature and state government, all local authorities such as panchayats — the elected councils that govern a village or a group of villages — and municipalities, and other public authorities within India.
So the instructions do not fall on the central government alone. A district council that ignores primary schooling and a state government that ignores nutrition are both failing the same constitutional duty.
A Promise Without A Courtroom
The most unusual feature of Part IV is stated by Article 37 itself. The Article is short, and it is worth reading in the Constitution’s own words.
Read the sentence slowly and the tension is obvious. The first half withdraws the courts. The second half insists that these principles are fundamental and that applying them is a duty.
The first half makes the Directive Principles non-justiciable. A provision is justiciable when a person can go to a court and have it enforced; a non-justiciable provision carries no such remedy. If a state government builds no village panchayat, no citizen can file a case demanding one.
The second half refuses to let the matter rest there. The words ‘fundamental in the governance of the country’ place Part IV at the centre of what government is for, and the word ‘duty’ is not the language of an optional suggestion.
What Article 37 cannot tell us is how that duty is enforced when a government simply declines to perform it. The Article names an obligation without naming a remedy, and the rest of this chapter is largely about what filled that gap — elections, public pressure, legislation and, in time, the courts themselves.
Where The Idea Came From
The framers did not invent this device. They adapted it from the Constitution of Ireland of 1937, which set out ‘Directive Principles of Social Policy’ as guidance for the legislature that the courts would not enforce.
They also had a closer model. Under the Government of India Act, 1935, the British Crown issued an Instrument of Instructions — a document telling the Governor-General and the provincial Governors how their powers were to be exercised. B. R. Ambedkar himself compared Part IV to that instrument, with one crucial difference: the new instructions ran to India’s own legislature and executive, and were issued by Indians to themselves.
The Goal: A Welfare State
Behind the whole of Part IV lies a single idea about what the Indian state was to be. It was not to be a mere police state — a state whose work stops at maintaining order and protecting property.
It was to be a welfare state: a state that accepts responsibility for the living conditions of its people, and uses law, taxation and public spending to improve them. Article 38 makes this ambition explicit. It directs the State to promote the welfare of the people by securing a social order in which social, economic and political justice informs every institution of national life.
The Preamble had already promised justice — social, economic and political. Part III protected the political side of that promise. Part IV was the instrument for the social and economic side, which no declaration of rights, by itself, could deliver.
Reading Part IV Correctly
Three cautions are worth carrying into the rest of the chapter.
First, non-justiciable does not mean unimportant. The framers deliberately used the word ‘fundamental’ about Part IV, the same word they used of the rights in Part III.
Second, the Directive Principles are addressed to policy, not to conduct. They tell the State what to aim at; they do not tell a citizen what to do.
Third, Part IV is not frozen. Parliament has amended it — adding new directives, and once attempting to raise it above Part III altogether. Those changes are the subject of section 9.4.
9.2 Classification of the Directive Principles
The Constitution nowhere divides Part IV into groups. Articles 36 to 51 simply run one after another, mixing wages, panchayats, monuments and foreign policy in no obvious order.
The classification used in this chapter is therefore the work of scholars, not of the Constitution. It sorts the directives by the political tradition each one draws upon: socialist, Gandhian and liberal.
The grouping is useful because it shows what the Constituent Assembly actually did. The Assembly did not follow one ideology. It gathered goals from the socialist demand for economic equality, from Gandhi’s vision of a self-reliant village order, and from the liberal concern with law, education, judicial independence and international peace.
Because the grouping is interpretive, its edges are untidy. A single Article can belong to two traditions at once, and different textbooks place a few of them differently. What follows is the standard three-fold arrangement, with the overlaps pointed out where they occur.
The three groups are set side by side below before each is taken up in turn.
9.2.2 Gandhian Principles
The Gandhian directives carry into the Constitution the programme Mahatma Gandhi had argued for during the national movement. Their common thread is decentralisation: the belief that political power and economic production should sit as close to the village as possible.
Article 40 directs the State to organise village panchayats and to endow them with the powers and authority needed to function as units of self-government. This is the constitutional form of Gandhi’s idea of Gram Swaraj, or village self-rule.
Article 43, already met among the socialist directives, also instructs the State to promote cottage industries — small-scale production carried on in homes or villages, individually or on a co-operative basis. Article 43B, inserted much later, directs the State to promote the voluntary formation, autonomous functioning, democratic control and professional management of co-operative societies.
Article 46 directs the State to promote with special care the educational and economic interests of the weaker sections, and in particular of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, and to protect them from social injustice and all forms of exploitation.
Article 47, besides its concern with nutrition and health, directs the State to bring about prohibition — a ban on the consumption of intoxicating drinks and of drugs injurious to health, except for medicinal purposes. Article 48 directs the State to organise agriculture and animal husbandry, and to take steps to preserve and improve breeds and to prohibit the slaughter of cows and calves and other milch and draught cattle.
9.2.3 Liberal Principles
The liberal directives are concerned less with redistribution than with the framework within which a free society operates: uniform civil law, education, an independent judiciary, the protection of heritage and environment, and orderly relations with other states.
Article 44 directs the State to endeavour to secure for the citizens a uniform civil code throughout the territory of India — a single set of laws on matters such as marriage, divorce, inheritance and adoption, applying to all citizens irrespective of religion. Of all the directives, this is the one that has been debated most sharply, and it has not been enacted.
Article 45, in its present form, directs the State to provide early childhood care and education for all children until they complete the age of six years. This wording is the result of a later amendment, discussed in section 9.4, which moved school education for older children out of Part IV altogether.
Article 48, alongside its Gandhian concern with cattle, instructs the State to organise agriculture and animal husbandry on modern and scientific lines — a distinctly modernising, liberal instruction sitting in the same sentence as a traditional one.
Article 48A directs the State to protect and improve the environment and to safeguard the forests and wildlife of the country. Article 49 requires the protection of monuments, places and objects of artistic or historic interest declared to be of national importance.
Article 50 directs the State to take steps to separate the judiciary from the executive in the public services of the State. Where the same officer both prosecutes and judges, neither the accused nor the public can be confident of a fair hearing; the directive aims to keep the two functions in different hands.
Article 51 turns outward. It directs the State to promote international peace and security, to maintain just and honourable relations between nations, to foster respect for international law and treaty obligations, and to encourage the settlement of international disputes by arbitration.
What The Classification Shows
Taken together, the three groups explain why Part IV reads as it does. The Constituent Assembly was not writing a party manifesto; it was recording the shared goals of a movement that contained socialists, Gandhians and liberal constitutionalists.
That breadth is a strength and a difficulty at once. It gives every future government material to work with, whatever its ideology. It also means that Part IV contains goals that can pull against one another — modern scientific agriculture and traditional cattle protection, uniform civil law and community diversity — and the Constitution does not say which should yield.
9.3 Difference between Fundamental Rights and Directive Principles
Part III and Part IV were drafted by the same Assembly, in the same years, for the same purpose — to make independence mean something for ordinary people. They differ in almost every other respect.
The differences are not accidental. Each Part was built to do a job the other could not do, and the design choices follow from those jobs.
Enforceability: The Basic Difference
The Fundamental Rights are justiciable. Article 32 gives every citizen the right to move the Supreme Court for the enforcement of the rights in Part III, and the High Courts have a similar power. A violated right produces a case, and a case can produce an order.
The Directive Principles are non-justiciable, as Article 37 states in terms. No court can be asked to enforce them, and no legal remedy exists for their neglect.
This single difference generates most of the others. A right that a judge must enforce has to be defined precisely and must be within the State’s power to grant immediately. A goal that a judge will not enforce can be stated broadly and pursued over decades.
What Each Part Asks Of The State
Fundamental Rights are mainly negative injunctions — commands to the State to refrain from doing something. The State shall not discriminate on grounds only of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth. The State shall not deprive a person of life or personal liberty except according to procedure established by law.
Directive Principles are positive instructions — commands to the State to act. Organise village panchayats. Provide free legal aid. Raise the level of nutrition. Secure a living wage.
The distinction is not absolute, and it should not be pressed too far. Some rights require the State to act as well as to abstain, and the abolition of untouchability is an obvious example.
Who Each Part Addresses
Fundamental Rights are held by individuals. They are chiefly instruments in the hands of the citizen, to be used against the State when the State oversteps.
Directive Principles are addressed to the State. They are instruments in the hands of the government and the legislature, to be used in framing policy and drafting laws. A citizen cannot invoke them; a minister is expected to be guided by them.
What Kind Of Democracy Each Builds
Fundamental Rights secure political democracy — a system in which citizens can speak, associate, assemble, vote and worship freely, and can hold rulers to account. Without them, elections become a formality.
Directive Principles aim at social and economic democracy — a society in which the material conditions of life are not so unequal that formal freedoms become meaningless. Ambedkar warned the Assembly that political equality would sit uneasily beside social and economic inequality.
The historian Granville Austin argued that the two Parts together form the conscience of the Constitution. Neither Part, on his reading, makes sense without the other.
Sanction, Status And Emergency
Behind the Fundamental Rights stands legal force: violation is a constitutional wrong that can be challenged in court. Behind the Directive Principles stands political force: public opinion, press scrutiny, opposition criticism and, at the end of a five-year term, the vote.
The Fundamental Rights became operative the day the Constitution came into force. The Directive Principles are still being worked towards; many have been given effect by statute, and others remain aspirations.
There is also a difference during a National Emergency. The enforcement of Fundamental Rights can be curtailed while a Proclamation of Emergency is in operation. The Directive Principles are unaffected — there is nothing in them to suspend, because they were never enforceable to begin with.
The main points of contrast are collected below.
The table is a summary, not a verdict. Its last row states the position the courts eventually arrived at, not a rule written anywhere in the Constitution.
Complementary, Not Opposed
For all these differences, the two Parts were not meant to compete. They are complementary and supplementary to each other: Part III protects the citizen’s freedom, Part IV works on the conditions that make freedom usable.
A country with Part III alone would guarantee liberties that millions were too poor to exercise. A country with Part IV alone would pursue welfare with no protection against a government that decided welfare required silencing its critics.
The difficulty is that complementary parts can still collide in a particular case — when a law made to advance a directive restricts a right. That collision produced one of the longest constitutional arguments in India’s history, and it is taken up next.
9.4 Fundamental Rights and Directive Principles: A Changing Relationship
The differences set out in the last section are stable. The relationship between the two Parts is not. It has been argued over in the Supreme Court and rewritten by Parliament several times since 1950.
The question at the centre of the argument is simple to state. If Parliament passes a law to carry out a Directive Principle, and that law restricts a Fundamental Right, which one gives way?
The First Answer: Rights Prevail
The question arose almost immediately. In 1951, in State of Madras v. Champakam Dorairajan, the Supreme Court considered a government order in Madras that allotted seats in state colleges among communities in fixed proportions.
The state defended the order by pointing to Part IV and its concern with the weaker sections. The Court held that the order violated Article 29(2), which forbids denial of admission to a state-aided educational institution on grounds only of religion, race, caste or language.
Its reasoning was categorical. The Directive Principles, being unenforceable, had to conform to and run as subsidiary to the Fundamental Rights. Where the two conflicted, Part III would prevail.
Parliament responded within months. The Constitution (First Amendment) Act, 1951, inserted Article 15(4), which permits the State to make special provision for the advancement of socially and educationally backward classes and for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.
This set the pattern for the next thirty years: a judgment protecting Part III, followed by an amendment enlarging the room for Part IV.
Land Reform And The Property Question
Most of the collisions concerned property. Part IV asked the State to distribute the material resources of the community for the common good and to prevent concentration of wealth. Doing that meant abolishing intermediaries such as zamindars — landholders who collected revenue from cultivators under colonial arrangements — and capping how much land one owner could hold.
Landowners challenged these laws as violations of the right to property, then a Fundamental Right. Parliament repeatedly amended the Constitution to protect the reform statutes from challenge.
The argument widened from ‘which Part prevails?’ to a deeper question: how far may Parliament amend the Constitution at all?
Golak Nath And The Twenty-fourth Amendment
In 1967, in Golak Nath v. State of Punjab, the Supreme Court held that Parliament had no power to take away or abridge the Fundamental Rights by constitutional amendment — not even to implement a Directive Principle.
Parliament rejected that conclusion. The Constitution (Twenty-fourth Amendment) Act, 1971, affirmed that Parliament may amend any provision of the Constitution, including Part III, using the procedure in Article 368.
The Constitution (Twenty-fifth Amendment) Act, 1971, went further. It inserted Article 31C, which protected laws made to give effect to the directives in Article 39(b) and Article 39(c) from challenge on the ground that they violated Articles 14, 19 or 31.
For the first time, a named set of Directive Principles had been placed above named Fundamental Rights.
Kesavananda Bharati And The Basic Structure
The turning point came in 1973. In Kesavananda Bharati v. State of Kerala, a thirteen-judge bench overruled Golak Nath and held that Parliament may amend any part of the Constitution, including the Fundamental Rights.
But it attached a limit. No amendment may damage or destroy the basic structure of the Constitution — those essential features without which the Constitution would cease to be what it is. The Court did not close the list of such features.
Applying that test, the Court upheld the first part of Article 31C but struck down the clause that would have barred courts from examining whether such a law really gave effect to Article 39(b) or (c). Judicial review, it held, could not be shut out.
The Forty-second Amendment And Minerva Mills
The Constitution (Forty-second Amendment) Act, 1976, made the widest change of all. Section 4 of that Act extended Article 31C so that a law made to give effect to any Directive Principle was protected against challenge under Articles 14 and 19.
The same amendment also added new directives to Part IV — free legal aid in Article 39A, workers’ participation in management in Article 43A, and protection of the environment in Article 48A — and strengthened Article 39(f) on the protection of childhood and youth.
The extension of Article 31C did not survive. In 1980, in Minerva Mills v. Union of India, the Supreme Court struck it down.
The doctrine the Court applied is called harmonious construction — the practice of reading two provisions together so that both are given effect, and treating one as overriding the other only when no such reading is possible.
Where Matters Stand
Three points sum up the present position.
Parliament may amend any part of the Constitution, including Part III, but may not damage its basic structure. The balance between Fundamental Rights and Directive Principles is one of the features that structure includes.
Where a law made to advance a directive can be read consistently with a right, the courts will read it that way. Where it cannot, the Fundamental Right prevails, except within the narrow protection Article 31C still gives to laws implementing Article 39(b) and (c).
And a Fundamental Right is itself interpreted in the light of Part IV. Article 21 — the right to life and personal liberty — has been read by the Supreme Court as extending to a life of dignity, drawing on directives concerning livelihood, health, education and a clean environment. Part IV, unenforceable in itself, has thus shaped what an enforceable right means.
Part IV Since Then
Parliament has continued to work on Part IV, but by legislation rather than by contest with the courts.
The Constitution (Eighty-sixth Amendment) Act, 2002, moved school education across the line. It inserted Article 21A, making free and compulsory education for children aged six to fourteen a Fundamental Right, and rewrote Article 45 to cover early childhood care and education for children below six. What had been an unenforceable directive became, for one age group, an enforceable right.
The Constitution (Ninety-seventh Amendment) Act, 2011, inserted Article 43B, directing the State to promote co-operative societies, and gave the formation of such societies protection under the right to form associations.
Both changes point the same way. The line between Part III and Part IV is drawn by the Constitution, but it has been moved — and it was moved in the direction of making promises enforceable.
9.5 The Significance and Working of the Directive Principles
A student meeting Part IV for the first time usually asks the same question the Constituent Assembly asked: what is the point of an instruction nobody can be forced to obey?
The answer has two halves. The first is about what the Directive Principles do inside the constitutional system, whether or not any particular one is carried out. The second is about what has actually been done.
9.5.1 Why the Principles Matter
They Fix The Purpose Of The State
Part IV settles an argument that many constitutions leave open: what is government for? By listing wages, work, nutrition, education, legal aid and village self-government, it declares that the Indian state is a welfare state and not merely a keeper of order.
That declaration has consequences even without a court order. A government that wants to spend on public health is acting on a constitutional direction; a government that ignores it must explain why.
They Give Continuity Across Governments
Governments change; Part IV does not. Whichever party wins an election, it inherits the same list of constitutional goals.
This is why very different governments in India have all produced schemes for employment, food, schooling and rural development. The programmes differ in design, funding and name, but the directions they answer to are the same.
They Are A Yardstick For Voters
Because the directives are public and written down, citizens can measure a government against them. Has this government raised the level of nutrition? Has it provided legal aid? Has it made panchayats real units of self-government?
Ambedkar’s answer in the Assembly rested on exactly this. A government that neglects Part IV cannot be dragged into court, but it can be questioned in Parliament, criticised in the press and voted out.
They Help The Courts Read The Constitution
Part IV also works inside the courtroom, though not as a source of remedies. When a judge must decide whether a restriction on a right is reasonable, the fact that the law pursues a directive is a strong argument that it is.
More broadly, the directives supply content to open-ended rights. The reading of Article 21 as a right to live with dignity, discussed in the previous section, was built on directives about livelihood, health and education.
They Are Deliberately Open-ended
The directives are worded loosely — ‘adequate’ means of livelihood, a ‘living’ wage, a ‘decent’ standard of life. This is often listed as a defect. It is also what allows the same sentence to guide policy in 1955 and in 2025, as the economy and the country’s capacity change.
The Criticisms
The case against Part IV should be stated fairly, because it is not weak.
Critics have called the directives pious aspirations: a wish-list with no sanction, easy to praise and easy to postpone. A government can point to Article 41’s phrase about the limits of its economic capacity and defer almost anything.
A second criticism is that the list is unsystematic. Directives about international peace and monument protection sit beside directives about wages and child labour, with nothing to indicate which matters more or comes first.
A third is that Part IV has been used to justify restricting rights. The stretch between 1971 and 1976, when directives were placed above Articles 14 and 19, shows how a welfare goal can become an argument against judicial scrutiny.
Supporters answer that these are objections to how Part IV has been used, not to Part IV itself, and that the record of implementation is stronger than the criticism suggests. That record is the subject of the next subsection.
9.5.2 Putting the Principles into Practice
A directive becomes real through a chain that begins in Parliament or a state legislature and ends in an office, a school or a worksite.
Flowchart
FC 9.1 — How A Directive Principle Becomes Something A Citizen Can Use Caption: The route by which an unenforceable instruction in Part IV turns into an enforceable entitlement. Nodes: Directive in Part IV → government adopts it as policy → Bill introduced in Parliament or a state legislature → if passed and assented to, it becomes an Act → if rejected or lapsed, the directive remains unimplemented → Act creates rights, schemes and officials → citizen can now enforce the statutory right in court → separately, courts may use the directive to interpret a Fundamental Right → in rare cases Parliament amends the Constitution to convert the directive into a Fundamental Right
Land And Livelihood
The earliest and largest effort answered Article 39. From the 1950s, states passed land reform laws abolishing intermediaries such as zamindars, giving tenants security of tenure, imposing ceilings on how much land one household could hold, and distributing surplus land to the landless.
Results varied widely between states, and large gaps between the law and its enforcement have been widely documented. The point for this chapter is narrower: the legislation was a direct response to a constitutional direction.
Labour And Wages
Article 39, Article 42 and Article 43 have produced a large body of labour legislation. The Minimum Wages Act, 1948, requires wage floors to be fixed for scheduled employments. The Maternity Benefit Act, 1961, and the Equal Remuneration Act, 1976, address Article 42 and the directive on equal pay for equal work.
The Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act, 1976, abolished bonded labour and released those held under it. The Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, 1986 — renamed the Child and Adolescent Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act by amendment in 2016 — restricts the employment of children and adolescents.
Village Self-government
Article 40 waited more than forty years for full effect. The Constitution (Seventy-third Amendment) Act, 1992, and the Constitution (Seventy-fourth Amendment) Act, 1992, gave panchayats and municipalities constitutional status, regular elections, reserved seats and defined subjects of work.
This is a striking illustration of how Part IV operates. The directive did not compel Parliament to act in 1950. It also did not go away.
Justice, Education And Employment
Article 39A produced the Legal Services Authorities Act, 1987, which set up legal services authorities to provide free legal aid to those who cannot afford a lawyer.
Article 45 and Article 41 lie behind the Constitution (Eighty-sixth Amendment) Act, 2002, and the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009, which made schooling for children aged six to fourteen an enforceable entitlement.
Article 41’s concern with the right to work lies behind the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005, which guarantees a fixed number of days of paid unskilled work a year to rural households that demand it. Article 47 lies behind public health and nutrition programmes and, in several states, behind laws restricting or prohibiting the sale of liquor.
Environment And Heritage
Article 48A, added in 1976, works alongside laws such as the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, the Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980, and the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986. Article 49 is served by legislation protecting ancient monuments and archaeological sites of national importance.
Reading The Record Honestly
Two conclusions follow, and they pull in different directions.
The directives have been far more productive than their unenforceability suggests. A large part of India’s welfare law can be traced to a specific Article of Part IV.
Yet the gap between the promise and the condition of many citizens remains wide, and the Constitution offers no remedy for that gap other than politics. Whether that was a weakness in the design or an honest recognition of what constitutions can do is a question this chapter leaves with the reader.
9.6 Summary
The Directive Principles of State Policy are instructions to the State on the goals its laws and policies should pursue. They are contained in Part IV of the Constitution, Articles 36 to 51.
Article 36 makes the instructions binding on the whole State — Parliament and the Union government, state legislatures and governments, local authorities such as panchayats and municipalities, and other public authorities.
Article 37 states the chapter’s central paradox: Part IV is not enforceable by any court, yet its principles are fundamental in the governance of the country and it is the duty of the State to apply them in making laws.
The device was adapted from the Constitution of Ireland of 1937, and resembles the Instrument of Instructions issued under the Government of India Act, 1935 — with the difference that Indians now issued the instructions to themselves.
The purpose of Part IV is a welfare state rather than a mere police state: a state responsible for the living conditions of its people, giving effect to the Preamble’s promise of social and economic justice.
The Constitution contains no classification of the directives. Scholars group them by ideological source into socialist, Gandhian and liberal principles, and a few Articles belong to more than one group.
The socialist principles — Articles 38, 39, 39A, 41, 42, 43, 43A and 47 — seek social and economic justice: adequate livelihood, equal pay for equal work, a living wage, humane conditions of work, free legal aid, public assistance, nutrition and public health.
The Gandhian principles — Articles 40, 43, 43B, 46, 47 and 48 — seek a decentralised order: village panchayats as units of self-government, cottage industries, co-operative societies, protection of the weaker sections including the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, prohibition, and the organisation of agriculture and animal husbandry.
The liberal principles — Articles 44, 45, 48, 48A, 49, 50 and 51 — seek institutional reform: a uniform civil code, early childhood care and education, modern agriculture, protection of the environment and of monuments, separation of the judiciary from the executive, and international peace and respect for treaty obligations.
Fundamental Rights and Directive Principles differ in enforceability, in the kind of instruction they give, in whom they address, in the kind of democracy they build, and in the force behind them. Part III is justiciable, largely negative and addressed to the citizen; Part IV is non-justiciable, positive and addressed to the State.
The two Parts are complementary. Part III secures political democracy; Part IV aims at social and economic democracy, without which political freedom is difficult to use.
The relationship between them has changed over time. Champakam Dorairajan (1951) held that rights prevail; Golak Nath (1967) barred amendment of Part III; the Twenty-fourth and Twenty-fifth Amendments (1971) reversed that and inserted Article 31C; Kesavananda Bharati (1973) permitted amendment but protected the basic structure; the Forty-second Amendment (1976) extended Article 31C to all directives; Minerva Mills (1980) struck that extension down.
The settled position is harmonious construction: the two Parts are read together wherever possible, and the balance between them is itself part of the basic structure. Where they cannot be reconciled, the Fundamental Right prevails.
Part IV also shapes rights from within. The reading of Article 21 as a right to live with dignity draws on directives concerning livelihood, health, education and the environment.
The directives matter because they fix the purpose of the State, give continuity across changing governments, provide a public yardstick for voters, and guide the courts. Their looseness of wording lets them adapt as the country’s capacity changes.
They have been criticised as pious aspirations without sanction, as an unsystematic list, and as an argument that has been used to restrict judicial scrutiny of rights.
Much of Part IV has nevertheless been enacted: land reform legislation, minimum wages, equal remuneration, maternity benefit, abolition of bonded labour, restriction of child labour, free legal aid under the Legal Services Authorities Act, 1987, elected panchayats and municipalities under the Seventy-third and Seventy-fourth Amendments, 1992, guaranteed rural employment, and environmental and heritage protection.
In one case the line was crossed altogether. The Eighty-sixth Amendment, 2002, and the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009, turned a directive on schooling into a Fundamental Right under Article 21A.
The Arguments In One Place
The chapter’s central claim is that a constitutional promise can matter without being enforceable. Part IV fixes the ends of government, guides legislation, supplies meaning to enforceable rights, and gives voters a standard by which to judge those in power.
The strongest position against it is equally plain. A duty without a remedy is a duty a government may safely postpone, and the phrase about the limits of economic capacity supplies a permanent excuse.
Both positions accept the same facts: much of Part IV has become law, and much of what it promises has still not reached the people it was written for.
What they disagree about is the standard of judgement — whether a provision counts as effective because a judge can enforce it, or because it steadily shapes what governments do and what citizens expect.
9.7 Key Terms
Basic structure — the essential features of the Constitution which Parliament may not damage or destroy by any amendment.
Cottage industries — small-scale production carried on in homes or villages, individually or on a co-operative basis.
Directive Principles of State Policy — the instructions in Part IV of the Constitution, Articles 36 to 51, telling the State what goals its laws and policies should pursue.
Harmonious construction — the practice of reading two provisions together so that both are given effect, treating one as overriding the other only when no such reading is possible.
Instrument of Instructions — the document issued under the Government of India Act, 1935, directing the Governor-General and the Governors how their powers were to be exercised.
Justiciable — capable of being enforced through a court; a non-justiciable provision creates a duty but no legal remedy.
Non-justiciable — not enforceable by any court, as Article 37 declares the provisions of Part IV to be.
Political democracy — a system in which citizens can speak, associate, vote and hold rulers to account.
Prohibition — a ban on the consumption of intoxicating drinks and of drugs injurious to health, except for medicinal purposes.
Social and economic democracy — a society in which material conditions are not so unequal that formal political freedoms become impossible to use.
Uniform civil code — a single set of civil laws on matters such as marriage, divorce, inheritance and adoption, applying to all citizens irrespective of religion.
Welfare state — a state that accepts responsibility for the living conditions of its people and uses law, taxation and public spending to improve them.
9.8 Points to Ponder
Article 37 calls the Directive Principles fundamental in the governance of the country, and in the same sentence removes them from the courts. Can a duty be fundamental if nobody can be compelled to perform it?
The framers assumed that voters would punish a government that ignored Part IV. What conditions must exist in a society for that assumption to hold?
Schooling for children aged six to fourteen moved from Part IV to Part III. What should decide whether a promise is ready to be made enforceable — the strength of the need, or the capacity of the State to meet it?
The Supreme Court has held that the balance between Fundamental Rights and Directive Principles is part of the basic structure. Who should decide where that balance lies — an elected Parliament, or an appointed judiciary?
The directives are worded loosely: ‘adequate’ livelihood, a ‘living’ wage, a ‘decent’ standard of life. Is vagueness in a constitution a defect, or a way of keeping it useful across changing times?
Part IV contains goals that can pull against one another. When two directives point in opposite directions, and the Constitution gives no order of priority, on what grounds should a government choose?
9.9 Objective Questions
- The Directive Principles of State Policy are contained in:
- Part III, Articles 12 to 35
- Part IV, Articles 36 to 51
- Part IVA, Article 51A
- Part V, Articles 52 to 78 [1 mark]
- The Article which declares that the provisions of Part IV shall not be enforceable by any court is:
- Article 32
- Article 36
- Article 37
- Article 40 [1 mark]
- The directive to organise village panchayats as units of self-government is contained in:
- Article 39
- Article 40
- Article 44
- Article 50 [1 mark]
- Assertion (A): The Directive Principles of State Policy cannot be enforced by any court. Reason (R): The framers doubted whether a newly independent state had the resources to deliver these goals immediately.
- 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 but R is false.
- A is false but R is true. [1 mark]
- Assertion (A): Fundamental Rights are described as negative injunctions. Reason (R): They chiefly require the State to refrain from acting in certain ways.
- 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 but R is false.
- A is false but R is true. [1 mark]
- Match the Article in Column A with the directive in Column B: [1 mark]
| Column A | Column B |
|---|---|
| a. Article 39A | i. Uniform civil code |
| b. Article 44 | ii. Free legal aid |
| c. Article 48A | iii. Separation of the judiciary from the executive |
| d. Article 50 | iv. Protection of the environment, forests and wildlife |
Fill in the blank: The directives concerned with a living wage, equal pay for equal work and just conditions of work are classified as ____ principles. [1 mark]
State whether the following is true or false: The Constitution itself divides the Directive Principles into socialist, Gandhian and liberal groups. [1 mark]
The device of unenforceable directives was adapted by the framers of the Indian Constitution from the Constitution of:
- the United States of America
- Ireland
- Canada
- Australia [1 mark]
9.10 Check Your Concepts
Define the Directive Principles of State Policy and state the Part and Articles of the Constitution in which they are contained. [2 marks]
What is meant by saying that a constitutional provision is non-justiciable? Give one example from Part IV. [2 marks]
State any two Gandhian Directive Principles, naming the Article in each case. [2 marks]
Differentiate between Fundamental Rights and Directive Principles of State Policy on the basis of enforceability and of whom each addresses. [3 marks]
Why did the framers of the Constitution decide that the goals in Part IV should not be enforceable by the courts? Give reasons. [3 marks]
Explain, with one example each, what is meant by calling the Fundamental Rights negative injunctions and the Directive Principles positive instructions. [4 marks]
Describe any four socialist Directive Principles and explain how they aim to secure economic justice. [4 marks]
Evaluate the claim that the Directive Principles are merely pious aspirations without any real effect. [4 marks]
Explain the classification of the Directive Principles of State Policy into liberal, Gandhian and socialist principles, giving at least two Articles under each group. [6 marks]
‘Fundamental Rights and Directive Principles are complementary and supplementary to each other.’ Discuss this statement, and explain how the courts have dealt with the conflict between the two. [6 marks]
Discuss, with Indian examples, the ways in which the Directive Principles have been given effect through legislation and constitutional amendment. [6 marks]
9.11 Source & Passage-Based Questions
- Read the extract and answer the questions that follow.
“The provisions contained in this Part shall not be enforceable by any court, but the principles therein laid down are nevertheless fundamental in the governance of the country and it shall be the duty of the State to apply these principles in making laws.”
a. Identify the Article from which this extract is taken and the Part of the Constitution it governs. [2 marks]
b. Explain the apparent contradiction contained in this single sentence. [3 marks]
c. This Article tells us what the State's duty is. What does it not tell us about how that duty is to be secured? [2 marks]- Read the situation and answer the questions that follow.
A state legislature passes a law requiring every large landholding above a fixed size to be broken up, with the surplus land distributed to landless cultivators. The government states that the law gives effect to the directive that the material resources of the community should be distributed to serve the common good. Several landholders challenge the law in the High Court, arguing that it is arbitrary and violates their right to equality.
a. Which Directive Principle is the government relying upon, and under which Article does it fall? [2 marks]
b. Explain how a court would approach the conflict between the law and the Fundamental Right relied upon by the landholders. [4 marks]
c. State one thing this situation cannot tell us about how successful land reform has been in practice. [2 marks]- Read the situation and answer the questions that follow.
During a debate in a state assembly, a member argues that the government has failed in its constitutional duty because rural schools in the state have too few teachers and no midday meals. The minister replies that no court has ever ordered the government to provide these things, and that the state’s finances do not permit more spending.
a. Which Directive Principles are relevant to the member's complaint? Name any two, with their Articles. [2 marks]
b. Assess the minister's reply. Is the absence of a court order a complete answer to the criticism? [4 marks]
c. Explain how the position on school education for children aged six to fourteen differs from the position on other Part IV goals. [2 marks]
9.2.1 Socialist Principles
The socialist directives are the economic heart of Part IV. Their purpose is to build a welfare state on the principles of democratic socialism: to secure social and economic justice, to reduce inequalities of income and opportunity, and to protect those who work for a living.
The word ‘socialist’ here needs care. Jawaharlal Nehru, who led the government that first put these directives into practice, described the objective of Indian planning as a socialistic pattern of society rather than socialism. Private property and private enterprise were not abolished; the State took on the duty of regulating them in the public interest.
The Core Economic Directives
Article 38 directs the State to promote the welfare of the people by securing a social order in which social, economic and political justice informs every institution of national life. A second clause, added later, directs the State to minimise inequalities in income and to work to eliminate inequalities in status, facilities and opportunities — not only between individuals, but between groups, regions and occupations.
Article 39 is the most detailed of the economic directives. It lists the ends towards which policy is to be directed:
Article 39A directs the State to secure equal justice and to provide free legal aid, so that no citizen is denied the chance to seek justice because of poverty or other disability. The point is practical: a right that only the wealthy can afford to litigate is not equally available to all.
Work, Wages And Well-being
Four further Articles deal with the conditions of working life.
Article 41 directs the State, within the limits of its economic capacity, to secure the right to work, to education and to public assistance in cases of unemployment, old age, sickness and disablement. The qualifying phrase about economic capacity is a reminder of the argument made in the Constituent Assembly.
Article 42 requires provision for just and humane conditions of work and for maternity relief. Article 43 directs the State to secure for all workers a living wage — a wage sufficient not merely to survive on, but to maintain a decent standard of life. Article 43A, added later, directs the State to secure the participation of workers in the management of industries.
Article 47 places nutrition, the standard of living and public health among the primary duties of the State.
What Does A ‘Living Wage’ Mean? The worker: a wage that covers food, housing, schooling and medical care, not merely survival. The employer: a wage the enterprise can pay without closing, which depends on what the market allows. Both agree: the figure cannot be set by the Constitution alone; it requires law, evidence and negotiation.