LLM Foundation Course Law and Social Transformation of India 2024 - Group III Question Paper with Solutions

How far legal institutions, policies, and judicial decisions have contributed to addressing societal inequalities, promoting social justice, and fostering progressive change in India? Explain.

For full marks, cover: Pound's theory in full, with the classification of interests and the jural postulates; the debate whether law leads or follows; then the three instruments the question names, institutions, policies and judicial decisions, each treated separately with names, statutes and cases; and a critical section that concedes where each has failed.

Two working rules follow. Interests must be evaluated on the same plane, so an individual claim is restated in terms of the corresponding social interest before it is weighed, otherwise the label decides the outcome. And the evaluation is tested against the jural postulates of the civilisation of the time, the assumptions a society takes for granted.

2. Does law lead or follow?

Savigny and the historical school hold that law expresses the Volksgeist and can only record what a people already believe, so a transplanted law is inert. Bentham, Austin and Pound hold that law is a designed instrument. Maine described progressive societies as moving from status to contract, which is the direction Indian law has tried to accelerate.

The rights commissions. The National Human Rights Commission under the Protection of Human Rights Act, 1993, with State Commissions and the powers of a civil court, whose composition was widened by the 2019 amendment so that a Judge of the Supreme Court, and not only a former Chief Justice of India, may chair it and the term was reduced from five years to three. The National Commission for Women (1990 Act); the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (2005 Act), which also monitors the POCSO Act; the National Commission for Scheduled Castes and for Scheduled Tribes under Articles 338 and 338A; the National Commission for Backward Classes, given constitutional status as Article 338B by the 102nd Amendment in 2018; the National Commission for Minorities (1992 Act); and the Commissioner for Linguistic Minorities under Article 350B. Every one of them investigates and recommends and none can enforce, which is the standing weakness of the Indian commission model.

The legal services machinery under the Legal Services Authorities Act, 1987, which gives content to Article 39A and runs Lok Adalats, whose awards are deemed decrees.

Panchayati Raj institutions under Parts IX and IXA, with one third of seats reserved for women and reservation for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in proportion to population, and, in Scheduled Areas, the Gram Sabha empowered by PESA, 1996.

Social security consolidation: the four labour codes, in force from 21 November 2025, of which the Code on Social Security, 2020 for the first time defines and covers gig and platform workers.

5. Judicial decisions

Kesavananda Bharati v. State of Kerala (1973) 4 SCC 225 and Minerva Mills v. Union of India (1980) 3 SCC 625 placed the balance between Parts III and IV in the basic structure, so a directive principle became the interpretive key to a fundamental right rather than a pious hope.

Maneka Gandhi v. Union of India (1978) 1 SCC 248 held that the procedure under Article 21 must be right, just and fair, and joined Articles 14, 19 and 21 into a golden triangle. From that came the right to livelihood (Olga Tellis v. Bombay Municipal Corporation (1985) 3 SCC 545, pavement dwellers, livelihood held part of the right to life), legal aid and speedy trial (Hussainara Khatoon (1980)), education (Unni Krishnan v. State of Andhra Pradesh (1993) 1 SCC 645, which produced Article 21A), a wholesome environment (Subhash Kumar v. State of Bihar (1991) 1 SCC 598) and privacy (K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India (2017) 10 SCC 1).

6. The critical analysis

Institutions that cannot enforce produce reports, not remedies. Every commission listed above has the powers of a civil court for an inquiry and no power to compel a government to act. The Commissioner for Linguistic Minorities has recorded the same failures for decades.

Policies fail where the beneficiary cannot enforce them personally. Bonded labour was abolished in 1976 and enforced by the Court in 1984, and identification still depends on a district vigilance committee that in many districts does not meet. Land ceiling laws were defeated by benami transfers. The pattern is consistent: an entitlement that requires an official to act is weaker than a right the holder can sue on.

Symbolic legislation. Some statutes are passed to record disapproval rather than to be enforced. The Dowry Prohibition Act, 1961 has coexisted with the spread of dowry into communities that never practised it, because both families are parties to the transaction and there is no complainant until the marriage fails.

Conclusion. Pound's model describes India accurately with one correction: he assumed the engineer would be the legislature and the practising lawyer, and in India it has most often been the court, because the Constitution made rights justiciable while leaving the social programme in an unenforceable Part IV. Measured against the question, the three instruments have contributed unequally. Judicial decisions have done the most, because they created enforceable rights. Policies have done a great deal where they carried money and an institution the citizen meets, as with school education and employment guarantee. Institutions have done the least, because the Indian commission is designed to recommend. Law has demonstrably reduced legally sanctioned inequality, since no hierarchy now has a legal defence; it has been far less successful against inequality of fact, which requires administration, money and time rather than drafting.