BLS LLB 5 Years Sem 3 Political Science 2 2024-25 - ATKT 60/40 Question Paper with Solutions

The question refers to the Prescriptive theory of political obligation, and the sanction behind it is custom, tradition and long usage, reinforced by the habit of obedience and by the weight of social disapproval that falls on anyone who breaks with established practice.

The theory holds that the state is obeyed because it has always been obeyed. Authority acquires its title by prescription, that is by long and uninterrupted exercise, exactly as a right of way is acquired by long use in law. The citizen does not consciously consent; he inherits an arrangement, and the antiquity of the arrangement is itself the reason for accepting it.

Its chief exponent is Edmund Burke, who argued that a constitution is the accumulated wisdom of generations and that the present generation holds it in trust rather than owning it.

2. Gandhism prefers decentralised cottage and village industry: khadi, spinning and handicraft, production by the masses rather than mass production, and it is suspicious of machinery that displaces human labour and concentrates economic power.

Does it undermine parliamentary sovereignty? No, and for a specific reason: the Indian Parliament never possessed sovereignty in the British sense. Under the Indian Constitution it is a created body with limited powers: it can legislate only on the subjects assigned to it, its laws are void under Article 13 if they violate Part III, and it exercises the amending power itself as a power conferred by Article 368. A power conferred by a document cannot be used to destroy the document that confers it. The Constitution is sovereign in India, not Parliament, so the doctrine confirms the constitutional scheme rather than undermining it.

Article 19(1) guarantees six freedoms to citizens. Two of them, with their permitted restrictions:

1. Article 19(1)(a): freedom of speech and expression. Under Article 19(2) the State may impose reasonable restrictions in the interests of the sovereignty and integrity of India, the security of the State, friendly relations with foreign States, public order, decency or morality, or in relation to contempt of court, defamation or incitement to an offence.
2. Article 19(1)(g): freedom to practise any profession, or to carry on any occupation, trade or business. Under Article 19(6) the State may impose reasonable restrictions in the interests of the general public, and may in particular prescribe professional or technical qualifications, or carry on any trade or business itself, wholly or partly, to the exclusion of citizens.

The other four are (b) assembly peaceably and without arms, (c) association or unions, (d) movement throughout the territory of India, and (e) residence and settlement in any part of India.

Legitimacy is the quality that makes power rightful, so that those subject to it accept the right to command and obey willingly rather than from fear. It converts naked power into authority.

Max Weber defined it as the belief of the governed in the rightfulness of the rule, and identified three grounds on which that belief may rest: tradition, charisma and legal-rational rules. Lipset defined it as the capacity of a system to maintain the belief that its institutions are the most appropriate for the society.

In a modern democracy the chief source is a free and fair election held under a constitution.

A coup d'état, French for "a stroke of the state", is the sudden, illegal and usually violent seizure of state power by a small group from within the existing establishment, most often the armed forces or a faction of the ruling elite. It displaces the persons in power without necessarily changing the political, social or economic system.

One difference from a revolution: a coup changes only the rulers, while a revolution changes the system. A coup is carried out by a small group from inside the state apparatus and leaves the social and economic order intact; a revolution is a mass movement from below which overturns the existing political, social and economic structure, as the French Revolution of 1789 and the Russian Revolution of 1917 did.

Other differences available: a coup is quick, often over in days, while a revolution is a prolonged process; a coup usually has no ideology, while a revolution is driven by one; and a coup involves limited violence among elites, while a revolution involves mass participation.

5. A state in which men possess natural rights to life, liberty and property, which exist before the state and are not its gift.
6. A state in which property arises from labour. A man owns his own person, so when he mixes his labour with what nature has provided he makes it his own, subject to two provisos: that he leave "enough and as good" for others, and that nothing be allowed to spoil.
7. A state in which every man is the executor of the law of nature, entitled to judge and punish breaches of it himself.

Why men leave it: the inconveniences

The state of nature is tolerable but insecure, because it lacks three things:

1. An established, settled, known law, received and allowed by common consent as the standard of right and wrong.
2. A known and indifferent judge, with authority to determine disputes, since in the state of nature every man is judge in his own cause, and self-love makes men partial.
3. A power to back and support the sentence when right, and to give it due execution.

Political obligation rests on consent, express for the founders and tacit for those who continue to reside within the territory and enjoy its protection. It is therefore limited and conditional.

The right of resistance. If the government breaks the trust, by attacking life, liberty or property, ruling arbitrarily, or dissolving the legislature, power reverts to the people, who may resist and establish a new government. Locke calls this an appeal to Heaven, and insists that it is not a recipe for constant rebellion, since people are slow to move and will endure much before they act.

Criticism

1. The state of nature and the contract are historically fictitious; anthropology shows no such condition and no such agreement.
2. Tacit consent inferred from mere residence is not real consent. Hume objected that a poor man can no more leave his country than a sleeping passenger can leave a ship.
3. His account of the state of nature is inconsistent: if men are reasonable and the law of nature is known, it is not clear why the inconveniences are serious enough to require a state.

What makes a law unjust

A law is formally valid when made by the competent authority in the prescribed manner. It is unjust when, though validly made, it violates morality, natural justice, human dignity or fundamental rights.

St Augustine said that an unjust law is no law at all, and Aquinas developed this into the position that a law contrary to the divine or natural law does not bind in conscience. Martin Luther King Jr, in the Letter from Birmingham Jail, gave the most usable test: a just law uplifts human personality, an unjust law degrades it, and a law is unjust when a majority imposes on a minority a rule it does not make binding on itself.

The problem is that an unjust law creates a conflict between legal duty and moral duty. Political obligation is not absolute: the citizen owes obedience, but the state owes justice, and where it fails the ground of the obligation is weakened.

1. John Locke: government is a trust; if it breaks the trust by attacking life, liberty or property, the people may resist and replace it, by an "appeal to Heaven".
2. T.H. Green: the citizen ought normally to obey, because law serves the common good, but may resist a law that defeats the common good, preferably by lawful and public means, and only where the general interest will not suffer more from the resistance than from the law.
3. Gandhi: resistance must be non-violent, open, and must accept the punishment, since the aim is to convert the opponent, not to defeat him.
4. Martin Luther King Jr: one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws, but must do so openly, lovingly and with a willingness to accept the penalty, which is "the highest respect for law".
5. Nelson Mandela: began with non-violent resistance to apartheid and turned to armed struggle only when every peaceful channel was closed, returning to negotiation once they reopened.
6. Henry David Thoreau, in Civil Disobedience (1849), refused to pay a tax to a state that supported slavery, and argued that a citizen must not lend himself to the wrong he condemns.

The Indian position

India recognises no legal right of resistance, and does not need to, because the Constitution supplies lawful channels that make revolutionary resistance largely unnecessary: Articles 32 and 226 for the enforcement of fundamental rights, judicial review under Article 13 to strike down a law violating Part III, Article 19(1)(a) and (b) for protest and assembly, and periodic elections under Article 326 to remove a government. What the Constitution recognises is a right to challenge unjust laws inside the system, which is the constitutional descendant of the older right.

3. It produced limited and constitutional government. Separation of powers, the rule of law, judicial review, an independent judiciary and a written constitution are all devices developed by liberals to prevent the concentration of power, and they remain the standard architecture of a free state.
4. It grounded government in consent. Authority derives from the governed, which makes government accountable and removable, and it is the intellectual source of representative democracy and of universal adult franchise.
5. It secured equality before the law and abolished privilege by birth, replacing status with contract and hereditary rank with careers open to talent.
6. It promotes tolerance and pluralism. Liberalism grew out of the wars of religion, and its practical proposal, that people who disagree profoundly can live under one law without one of them having to win, remains the only workable answer for a diverse society.
7. It is flexible and self-correcting. Liberalism reformed itself when its classical form failed: negative liberalism became positive liberalism after T.H. Green, producing factory legislation, public education and the welfare state. A doctrine that can absorb its own critique is more durable than one that cannot.

Its influence in India

The Indian Constitution is liberal in structure: Part III guarantees individual rights against the state; Article 14 secures equality before the law; Articles 19 and 21 secure the classic liberties; Articles 25 to 28 establish freedom of religion with no established church; judicial review and the separation of powers limit government; and Article 326 provides universal adult franchise. To this it adds a positive-liberal and socialist Part IV.

3. Supremacy of the Constitution, binding on both Union and States.
4. An independent judiciary, with the Supreme Court exercising original jurisdiction under Article 131 in disputes between the Union and the States.
5. Bicameralism, with the Rajya Sabha representing the States.
6. Constitutional status for local self-government since the 73rd and 74th Amendments, 1992.

The unitary features, which make it quasi-federal

1. A strong Centre. The Union List is the longest and contains the most important subjects; residuary powers belong to the Union under Article 248, unlike the United States; and under Article 254 Union law prevails in the Concurrent List.
2. States are not indestructible. Under Article 3 Parliament may by ordinary law form a new State, or alter the area, boundaries or name of any State, the affected State legislature being consulted but its views not binding. India is therefore an indestructible Union of destructible States.
3. Single citizenship, unlike the United States and Australia.

9. Financial dependence of the States on the Union, with the major taxes and the Finance Commission's devolution controlled centrally.
10. The Comptroller and Auditor General and the Election Commission are single national institutions covering both levels.

Judicial position

In S.R. Bommai v Union of India (1994) the Supreme Court held that federalism is part of the basic structure, and laid down substantial restraints on Article 356: the proclamation is subject to judicial review, the floor of the House is the proper test of majority, and a dismissed government can be restored. In State of West Bengal v Union of India (1963) the Court had earlier held that the States are not sovereign. In Kesavananda Bharati (1973) federalism was listed among the basic features.

Why punishment is the responsibility of the modern state:

1. A crime is a wrong against the whole community, not merely against the individual injured. That is why criminal proceedings are brought in the name of the State and cannot ordinarily be compromised by the victim, and it is the difference between a crime and a civil wrong.
2. To prevent private revenge and blood feud. If the victim's family punished the offender, the result would be a cycle of retaliation. By taking retribution into public hands the state converts vengeance into justice.
3. Impartiality requires a judge who is not a party. Locke identified this as one of the three "inconveniences" of the state of nature: every man is judge in his own cause, and self-love makes men partial. Men enter civil society precisely to obtain a settled law, an indifferent judge and a power to execute the sentence, surrendering their own right to punish in the process.
4. The state alone has the monopoly of legitimate force. Weber's definition of the state is the human community that successfully claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a territory, and punishment is that monopoly in operation.

3. Moral responsibility: the offender is a free, rational agent who chose to do wrong and must answer for it. Kant defended it on exactly this ground, that a man must never be treated merely as a means to the ends of others.
4. Expiation: punishment wipes out the guilt and restores the offender to society with the account settled.
5. It channels moral indignation into an orderly legal process.

Merits: it satisfies the sense of justice; it keeps punishment proportionate and so limits the state; it prevents private revenge; and it respects the offender as a responsible person.

Demerits: it is close to institutionalised vengeance; it is negative, reforming nobody and reducing no crime; it cannot be applied literally, since the state cannot defraud the fraudster; it supplies no measure of how much punishment is proportionate; and it assumes a free will that may be absent in the very young, the mentally ill or the desperate.

Name two factors for the rise of regionalism in India? (ii) What is the difference between political party and interest groups.

State two examples of interest groups from India.

(i) Regionalism, and two factors behind its rise in India

Regionalism is the political expression of a strong attachment to one's own region, in which the interests, identity, language and culture of the region are asserted, and sometimes placed above those of the nation as a whole. It may be positive, seeking development, autonomy and cultural protection within the constitutional framework, or negative, taking the form of hostility to outsiders, demands for separate statehood, or in the extreme, secession.

(ii) Political party and interest group distinguished, with two Indian examples

A political party is an organised body of citizens holding common views on public questions, which acts as a unit to capture political power through constitutional means. An interest group, or pressure group, is an organised association which seeks to influence government policy in its members' interest without seeking office itself.

TRAI suggested that the Telecom department should fix a definite time line not exceeding 30 days post National Telecom Law Tribunal (NCLT) approval for providing written approval to transfer or merger of licenses. (i) Identify the type of authority as given by Max Weber on the basis of the given facts.

Name three features of this type of authority. (ii) Name three differences between power & authority.

2. It is defined and limited by rules, so an act beyond competence is void. The statute that confers the power also states its subject matter, its territory and its procedure. TRAI may recommend on telecom licensing and not on matters outside the Act, and an act outside that competence is ultra vires and can be set aside by a court. This is the feature that distinguishes legal-rational authority most sharply from the other two, in which the limits are custom or the leader's own judgment.
3. Administration is bureaucratic: officials are recruited on merit by examination or defined qualification, are salaried, follow a career with promotion by seniority and achievement, work within a hierarchy with written records and fixed procedures, and keep their official capacity separate from their private life. Weber regarded bureaucracy as technically superior to every other form of administration because it is precise, fast, consistent and calculable.

Two further features available: it is impersonal and formally rational, treating like cases alike without regard to the person; and it is the typical form of authority in the modern state, because a complex society requires predictable, rule-bound administration.

(ii) Three differences between power and authority

(ii) Why is Article 32 of the Indian Constitution known as 'the heart and soul of the Constitution'?

(i) Equality before the law and equal protection of the laws

Article 14 contains two expressions, taken from two different legal traditions, and they are not synonyms.

2. That differentia must have a rational nexus with the object sought to be achieved by the law.

Article 14 forbids class legislation but permits reasonable classification. Later, in E.P. Royappa v State of Tamil Nadu (1974) and Maneka Gandhi v Union of India (1978), the Court added a further dimension: Article 14 strikes at arbitrariness, since arbitrariness is the antithesis of equality, so a law or an executive act that is arbitrary violates Article 14 without any need to find a comparator.

Exceptions to equality before the law exist and are worth naming: the immunities of the President and Governors under Article 361, parliamentary privilege under Articles 105 and 194, and diplomatic immunity.

(ii) Why Article 32 is "the heart and soul of the Constitution"

Article 32 guarantees the right to move the Supreme Court by appropriate proceedings for the enforcement of the Fundamental Rights conferred by Part III, and empowers the Court to issue directions, orders or writs, including habeas corpus, mandamus, prohibition, quo warranto and certiorari.

4. Direct access to the highest court. A person whose fundamental right is violated may go straight to the Supreme Court without exhausting other remedies, which is exceptional.
5. It is part of the basic structure. In L. Chandra Kumar v Union of India (1997) the Court held that judicial review under Articles 32 and 226 is a basic feature and cannot be excluded by amendment.
6. It is the foundation of public interest litigation. By relaxing the rule of locus standi, the Court allowed any public-spirited person to move it on behalf of those unable to approach it themselves, which transformed access to justice for the poor.

A limitation worth noting: Article 32 may be suspended during a National Emergency under Article 359, and the enforcement of Articles 20 and 21 is now protected from suspension by the 44th Amendment, 1978, a change made after the experience of ADM Jabalpur v Shivkant Shukla (1976), where the majority held that habeas corpus was unavailable during the Emergency. That decision was expressly overruled in K.S. Puttaswamy v Union of India (2017).

For full marks, cover: Mill and the context of On Liberty, the statement of the harm principle, its content and its exceptions, the three grounds on which he defends liberty of thought and discussion, criticisms of the principle, and then its influence on the Indian Constitution through Article 19, Article 21 and the case law, with a note on where India departs from Mill.

Mill and the context

John Stuart Mill (1806 to 1873) published On Liberty in 1859. Its subject, as he states it, is "civil or social liberty: the nature and limits of the power which can be legitimately exercised by society over the individual". His central anxiety is not the tyranny of a king, which he thought the constitutional struggles had settled, but the tyranny of the majority, exercised through law and, more insidiously, through social pressure and public opinion, which "leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself".

4. Persuasion remains permissible. Against self-regarding conduct society may use "remonstrating, reasoning, persuading or entreating", and individuals may avoid the person, but never compulsion or penalty.
5. Omissions can be harms. Mill accepts that a person may be made answerable for failing to do certain things, such as giving evidence or bearing his share of the common defence.
6. The exceptions. The principle applies to those "in the maturity of their faculties", so not to children, and Mill excluded societies he regarded as "backward", a qualification now generally rejected as a product of his time and his employment with the East India Company.

The defence of liberty of thought and discussion

Mill's argument in Chapter II is separate from the harm principle and is worth stating, because it is the part with the most direct constitutional influence. Silencing an opinion is "robbing the human race" for three reasons:

1. The suppressed opinion may be true, and to deny this is to assume our own infallibility.

4. It sits awkwardly with his utilitarianism: if the sole test is aggregate happiness, liberty should be restricted whenever restriction raises the total.
5. It underrates the social nature of man, treating him as more separable from his community than he is, which is the communitarian objection.

Influence on the Indian Constitution

1. Article 19(1)(a), freedom of speech and expression. Mill's defence of free discussion is the classical argument behind this guarantee. Crucially, Article 19(2) permits restrictions only on defined, harm-based grounds: sovereignty and integrity, security of the State, friendly relations with foreign States, public order, decency or morality, contempt of court, defamation and incitement to an offence. The technique of listing permitted grounds is Mill's principle written as a schedule.
2. The "reasonable restrictions" requirement. Restrictions must be reasonable and proportionate, judged by the court and not by the legislature, which is the institutional expression of the presumption in favour of liberty.

9. Constitutional morality over popular morality. In Navtej and Puttaswamy the Court held expressly that constitutional morality, not majoritarian or popular morality, governs, which is Mill's rejection of legal moralism adopted as doctrine.
10. The clear and present danger standard. In S. Rangarajan v P. Jagjivan Ram (1989) the Court held that the connection between expression and public order must be like "a spark in a powder keg", and in Shreya Singhal v Union of India (2015) it struck down Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, distinguishing discussion and advocacy from incitement, and holding that only the last may be restricted. That is the harm principle applied to speech with precision.

For full marks, cover: Article 368 and the three categories of amendment with examples, the procedure step by step, the basic structure limitation with the case law, an assessment of the design; then the unitary features listed with the Articles, and a conclusion on why the framers built it this way.

Part 1: The amendment procedure

Article 368 confers on Parliament the power to amend the Constitution "by way of addition, variation or repeal of any provision", and lays down the procedure. The Indian design is deliberately neither wholly rigid nor wholly flexible, which is why amendments fall into three categories.

Category 1: Amendment by simple majority of Parliament

These are outside the scope of Article 368 and are made like ordinary legislation, by a simple majority of members present and voting. They include:

1. Formation of new States and alteration of areas, boundaries or names under Articles 3 and 4.

2. The extent of the executive power of the Union and of the States (Articles 73 and 162).
3. The Supreme Court and the High Courts (Articles 124 to 147, 214 to 231, 241).
4. Distribution of legislative powers between the Union and the States (Chapter I of Part XI).
5. Any of the Lists in the Seventh Schedule.
6. Representation of the States in Parliament.
7. Article 368 itself.

The procedure step by step

1. A Bill may be introduced in either House, by a Minister or by a private member, and needs no prior recommendation of the President.
2. It must be passed in each House separately by the required majority. There is no provision for a joint sitting in case of disagreement, so a deadlock defeats the Bill.
3. Where the proviso applies, it goes to the State legislatures for ratification by half the States.
4. It is presented to the President, who, since the 24th Amendment, 1971, is bound to give assent and has no power to withhold or return it.
5. On assent it becomes a Constitution Amendment Act.

Criticisms: there is no provision for a special constituent body such as a constitutional convention; the States have no power to initiate an amendment except in respect of Legislative Councils; ratification by half the States is a low threshold; the absence of a joint sitting can produce deadlock; and much of the Constitution can be amended by Parliament alone.

Part 2: The unitary features of the Indian Constitution

The Constitution is federal in structure and unitary in spirit, which is why it is called quasi-federal. Article 1 itself avoids the word federation and calls India a "Union of States".

1. A strong Centre. The Union List has 97 entries against 66 in the State List, and contains the most important subjects. Under Article 254 Union law prevails over State law in the Concurrent List.
2. Residuary powers with the Union, under Article 248 and Entry 97 of the Union List, unlike the United States and Australia, where they rest with the units.

10. Financial Emergency, Article 360: the Centre may direct States on financial matters.
11. Parliament may legislate on State subjects in the national interest by a Rajya Sabha resolution under Article 249, with the consent of two or more States under Article 252, and to implement treaties under Article 253.
12. All-India Services under Article 312, the IAS and IPS, whose officers hold key posts in the States but are recruited and controlled by the Union.
13. Integrated audit and election machinery: a single Comptroller and Auditor General under Article 148 and a single Election Commission under Article 324 for both levels.
14. Financial dependence of the States, since the more elastic taxes are with the Union and devolution is decided on the Finance Commission's recommendation under Article 280.
15. Union control over State legislation, since certain Bills must be reserved for the President's assent, and he may withhold it.
16. Appointment of the State Governor, the Chief Election Commissioner and the State's High Court judges involves the Union.

For full marks, cover: the meaning and origin of liberalism, the conditions that produced it, its features set out fully, the two phases with the reason for the shift, its main thinkers, a critical evaluation, and its expression in the Indian Constitution.

Meaning and origin

Liberalism, from the Latin liber meaning free, is the political doctrine that the individual is the central fact of political life, that he possesses rights which the state did not create and may not destroy, and that government exists to serve him and must therefore be limited.

Harold Laski wrote that liberalism has been the dominant doctrine of the modern world since the Reformation, and that it is less a body of doctrine than a habit of mind, associated with tolerance, the free play of reason and suspicion of authority.

4. Limited government and constitutionalism. Power must be exercised under a written constitution, separated between organs, bound by the rule of law, and subject to judicial review.
5. Government by consent. Authority derives from the governed, expressed through representative institutions and periodic elections. Government is a trust, and a government that breaks it may be replaced.
6. Rule of law and equality before the law. The same law binds governor and governed; privilege by birth is abolished; careers are open to talent.
7. Toleration and freedom of thought, speech, press and religion. The state has no established church and no opinion of its own on questions of belief.
8. Faith in reason and in progress. Men are rational and can improve their condition if left free to try, and social problems yield to enquiry and discussion rather than to authority or tradition.
9. Private property, both as a natural right and as the material guarantee of independence from the state.
10. A free economy, in the classical phase laissez faire, with free competition and free trade.

The breakdown

The Industrial Revolution produced conditions the doctrine could not explain away: child labour, sixteen-hour days, industrial disease, slums, unemployment. Three things became clear: that a man too poor, too ill or too ignorant to use his freedom is not in fact free; that the parties to a wage bargain are not equal, so freedom of contract can be freedom for one side only; and that poverty, disease and ignorance restrict people as effectively as law does. The extension of the franchise to the working class then made it politically necessary to answer their demands.

Positive or modern liberalism, from about 1870

T.H. Green is the turning point, redefining freedom as "a positive power or capacity of doing or enjoying something worth doing or enjoying" and asking the state to remove the obstacles to it. The state becomes a positive good, an instrument of freedom rather than its enemy, and a law that compels school attendance enlarges liberty. Its programme is compulsory education, factory and safety legislation, public health, minimum wages and social insurance; its thinkers are Green, the later Mill, Hobhouse, Laski, Keynes and, in the twentieth century, John Rawls; and its monument is the welfare state after the Beveridge Report (1942).

Liberalism in the Indian Constitution

Part III is negative-liberal, a set of enforceable restraints on the state: Article 14 (equality before the law), Article 19 (the six freedoms), Article 21 (life and personal liberty), Articles 25 to 28 (freedom of religion with no established church). To these are added judicial review, separation of powers, an independent judiciary, federalism, and universal adult franchise under Article 326. Part IV, the Directive Principles, is positive-liberal and socialist, directing the state to secure work, education, a living wage and public assistance. The Indian Constitution therefore contains both phases of liberalism at once, and the relationship between them, resolved by reading Part IV as a guide to the interpretation of Part III, has been the central question of Indian constitutional law.

1. The argument from exploitation. Under private ownership, those who own the means of production appropriate value created by those who do not. Marx's theory of surplus value states the mechanism precisely: the worker is paid the cost of his subsistence and produces more than that, and the difference is taken as profit. Socialism ends the relationship rather than mitigating it.
2. The argument from equality. Capitalism produces extreme and cumulative inequality, since wealth generates further wealth and is inherited. Socialists argue that inequality of this degree is unjust because it does not correspond to differences in effort or desert, and is caused by ownership rather than by contribution.
3. The argument from freedom. This is the strongest argument and the one students usually miss. Formal freedom without means is empty: a person who is hungry, ill, illiterate or unemployed cannot use the liberties the law gives him. Socialism claims to make freedom real by securing its material conditions, which is the same argument T.H. Green made within liberalism.

8. The argument from security. Old age, sickness, disability and unemployment are risks no individual can insure against adequately on his own, and social security is a rational collective response.
9. The argument from social justice. The community's resources are a common inheritance, and the accident of birth should not determine a person's life chances.

Counter-arguments, in brief for balance

Socialism is charged with destroying incentive and therefore productivity; with concentrating enormous power in the state, which threatens liberty, the point Hayek pressed in The Road to Serfdom; with the information problem, since no planner can know what millions of dispersed decisions know, which is Mises's and Hayek's calculation argument; with producing bureaucracy and inefficiency; and, historically, with a poor record wherever it has been implemented in its full form.

The socialist provisions of the Indian Constitution

India adopted democratic socialism, pursued by law and consent within a parliamentary democracy, retaining private property in a mixed economy.

8. Article 42: just and humane conditions of work, and maternity relief.
9. Article 43: a living wage, decent conditions, and cottage industries.
10. Article 43A: workers' participation in management.
11. Article 47: nutrition and public health.

3. Fundamental Rights with socialist content

Article 14, 15(4), 16(4) and 46 authorise reservation; Article 17 abolishes untouchability; Article 23 prohibits forced labour, applied to bonded labour and to payment below the minimum wage in People's Union for Democratic Rights v Union of India (1982); Article 24 prohibits child labour in hazardous work; Article 21A, added by the 86th Amendment, 2002, makes education a fundamental right for children aged six to fourteen.

Assessment

The Constitution is not socialist in the Marxist sense. Private property survives, the market allocates most resources, and the liberalisation of 1991 required no amendment. What it establishes is a welfare state committed to social justice, in which the Directive Principles are non-justiciable but under Article 37 "nevertheless fundamental in the governance of the country". The shortfall between promise and delivery is real, and inequality has widened since liberalisation, but the constitutional direction is unambiguous.