The welfare state and the social justice framework

The first principle

Formal equality treats everyone alike, but people do not start alike: a child born into a landless Dalit family and a child born into a propertied family do not have the same chances even when the law treats them the same. Social justice is the idea that the state must correct these unequal starting points so that equality becomes real, and a welfare state is the set of laws, institutions and schemes through which it does so. Two questions follow from this, and the rest of the note answers them: on what basis does the Indian state owe welfare to the vulnerable, and why do so many well funded schemes still fail to reach them?

The core

Where the Constitution places social justice

• The Preamble promises justice, social, economic and political, ahead of liberty and equality, which signals that the other values are meant to serve it.
• Directive Principles (Part IV). Article 38 asks the state to secure a social order informed by social, economic and political justice, and its clause (2), added by the Forty fourth Amendment (1978), to minimise inequalities of income, status and opportunity. Article 39 asks for adequate means of livelihood, distribution of material resources for the common good and equal pay for equal work; Article 39A for equal justice and free legal aid; Article 41 for the right to work, education and public assistance in old age, sickness and disablement; Article 46 for promotion of the educational and economic interests of the weaker sections, especially Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs); and Article 47 for nutrition and public health.
• Fundamental Rights that enable it. Article 14 guarantees equality, but Articles 15(4), 15(5) and 16(4) allow special provisions and reservation for socially and educationally backward classes, SCs and STs. Article 17 abolishes untouchability, Article 21A makes education a right for children aged six to fourteen, and Articles 23 and 24 prohibit forced labour and hazardous child labour. These are enforceable in court, while Part IV is not, which is why welfare gains strength when a Directive Principle is turned into a right.

Rights based and welfare approaches

• The welfare approach treats benefits as the state's discretion: a scheme can be started, shrunk or ended by an executive order, and the beneficiary has no remedy if the benefit does not arrive.
• The rights based approach turns a need into a legal entitlement with a duty bearer and a remedy. The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), 2005 guaranteed every rural household a hundred days of wage work a year on demand with an unemployment allowance if work was not given, and its 2025 successor, the Viksit Bharat Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) Act, keeps a statutory guarantee of 125 days; the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009 makes schooling a right; and the National Food Security Act (NFSA), 2013 entitles up to 75 per cent of the rural and 50 per cent of the urban population to subsidised grain.
• The limit of rights. A right on paper does not deliver itself. When governance is fragmented across departments and public investment is low, entitlements are rationed through delayed wages, unfilled posts and closed counters, so a rights based design still needs money, staff and integration across departments to work.

Universal and targeted schemes

• Universal schemes cover everyone in a category, such as the midday meal, now Pradhan Mantri Poshan Shakti Nirman (PM POSHAN), for children in government and government aided schools. They are easy to run and carry no stigma, but cost more.
• Targeted schemes cover only those identified as eligible, as the Public Distribution System (PDS) did after it became the Targeted PDS in 1997. They save money but depend on accurate identification.
• Inclusion and exclusion errors. An inclusion error gives a benefit to someone not eligible; an exclusion error denies it to someone eligible. Tight targeting reduces the first and raises the second, and the second is the more serious failure in a welfare state because it falls on the poorest, who are least able to complain.

Dimensions

Who the vulnerable sections are

• By social group. SCs, STs, Other Backward Classes (OBCs), religious minorities and denotified and nomadic tribes face disadvantage rooted in caste, isolation or identity.
• By life stage and condition. Children, the elderly, women, persons with disabilities, transgender persons, manual scavengers and migrant workers face disadvantage rooted in dependence, discrimination or insecure work. Vulnerability overlaps: an elderly Dalit widow carries three disadvantages at once, which is why single category schemes often miss the most excluded.

Is welfare for the vulnerable discriminatory?

• The case that it is. Any scheme for a group treats others differently, and critics point to stigma attached to beneficiaries, benefits captured by the better off within a group, dependency on transfers rather than capacity, and the use of group benefits in identity politics.
• The constitutional answer. In State of Kerala v N. M. Thomas (1976) the Supreme Court held that Article 16(4) is not an exception to equality but an emphatic restatement of it, because equality of opportunity must account for unequal starting points. In Indra Sawhney v Union of India (1992) a nine judge bench upheld reservation for OBCs, but excluded the creamy layer and set a normal ceiling of 50 per cent, so that positive discrimination stays tied to disadvantage. Discrimination in the constitutional sense means unreasonable classification; a classification with a rational link to a real disadvantage is equality in practice, which is the idea of substantive equality.
• The balanced view. Such schemes are differential, not discriminatory, but they stay legitimate only if they are periodically reviewed, exclude those who have moved up, and are paired with universal services such as schools and health care that benefit everyone.

In practice

How schemes are organised

• Central sector and centrally sponsored schemes. Central sector schemes are fully funded and run by the Union, while centrally sponsored schemes (CSS) are cost shared and run by states, which makes state capacity the deciding factor in outcomes.
• Rationalisation of 2016. On the report of a Sub Group of Chief Ministers set up by the National Institution for Transforming India (NITI) Aayog in 2015, CSS were grouped as core of the core, core and optional. The core of the core schemes, which get the highest priority in funding, have included MGNREGA (now its 2025 successor), the National Social Assistance Programme and the umbrella programmes for SCs, STs, minorities and other vulnerable groups.
• Ministries for vulnerable groups. The Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment handles schemes for SCs, OBCs, senior citizens and persons with disabilities, such as post matric scholarships for SCs; the Ministry of Tribal Affairs handles schemes such as Eklavya Model Residential Schools; and the Ministry of Minority Affairs handles scholarships and skilling for the six notified minorities.

Why awareness and participation decide performance

• The problem. A scheme designed without the people it serves often misjudges their needs, and a beneficiary who does not know her entitlement cannot claim it or complain when it is denied. Without participation, implementation is checked only by the same officials who carry it out.
• Participation at every stage. In identification, the Gram Sabha can verify lists of the poor; in design, consultation catches wrong assumptions; in implementation, community groups can run or monitor services; and in evaluation, social audit and grievance redress feed back into redesign.
• MGNREGA social audits. Section 17 of MGNREGA requires the Gram Sabha to audit all works in the panchayat. Andhra Pradesh built an independent social audit society in 2009, whose public hearings recovered misappropriated funds and made officials answer in front of workers, and the practice grew from public hearings first held by the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan in Rajasthan in the 1990s.
• Kudumbashree. Kerala's poverty eradication mission (1998) organises women into neighbourhood groups linked to panchayats, so that the poor take part in planning and delivering schemes rather than only receiving them.
• Tribal self rule. The Panchayats (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act (PESA), 1996 requires the Gram Sabha or panchayat to be consulted before land is acquired and gives it ownership of minor forest produce, which puts tribal communities into decisions that affect them.

Evaluation

• Development Monitoring and Evaluation Office (DMEO). Set up under NITI Aayog in 2015 by merging the Programme Evaluation Organisation and the Independent Evaluation Office, it evaluates centrally sponsored schemes and runs output and outcome monitoring, and its findings are used when schemes come up for continuation at the end of each Finance Commission cycle.

Issues and way forward

• Too many small schemes. Overlapping schemes spread money thin and burden district staff with reporting. Fewer, larger umbrella schemes with flexible funds, as the 2015 Sub Group recommended, would let states adapt to local needs.
• Exclusion from lists. Old or inaccurate databases and rigid documentation leave eligible families out. Regular updating of lists through the Gram Sabha, doorstep enrolment and a simple appeal against exclusion would reduce this.
• Low awareness. Entitlements published only in government portals do not reach the illiterate or remote. Wall paintings, Gram Sabha readings and frontline workers such as Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHAs) and self help groups can carry information to the last house.
• Weak feedback. Social audits are uneven across states. Independent state social audit units, protection for auditors and binding action on findings would make them effective.
• Benefits captured by the better off. Periodic review of eligibility and application of the creamy layer principle where the law allows keep benefits with those who need them most.
• Outputs, not outcomes. Schemes report money spent and units built rather than lives changed. Outcome budgets, third party evaluation by DMEO and public data on results would shift attention to performance.

Common confusions

• Formal and substantive equality. Formal equality treats all alike; substantive equality treats unequals differently in order to make them equal. Indian constitutional law accepts the second since N. M. Thomas.
• Rights based and welfare schemes. A rights based law creates an enforceable entitlement with a remedy; a welfare scheme can be withdrawn by executive order. MGNREGA is a law; most scholarships are schemes.
• Inclusion and exclusion errors. Inclusion error is leakage to the ineligible; exclusion error is denial to the eligible. Cutting one usually increases the other.
• Central sector and centrally sponsored schemes. The first is wholly funded and run by the Union; the second is cost shared and run by states.

For the exam

• Keyword bank: social justice, welfare state, substantive equality, positive discrimination, Article 38, Article 46, rights based approach, entitlement, targeting, inclusion and exclusion errors, creamy layer, social audit, Gram Sabha, core of the core schemes, DMEO.
• Practise the previous year questions on this topic →
• Use in an answer:
  • Introduction with data: "With SCs and STs alone making up a quarter of India's population (Census 2011), welfare for the vulnerable is not a side programme of the state but the core of the constitutional promise of social justice."
  • Introduction with a judgement: "In State of Kerala v N. M. Thomas (1976) the Supreme Court held that special provisions for the disadvantaged restate equality rather than depart from it, because equality must take account of unequal starting points."
  • Conclusion: "Welfare for the vulnerable is differential, not discriminatory, so long as it is tied to real disadvantage, reviewed regularly and withdrawn from those who have moved up."
  • Conclusion: "Schemes perform when their beneficiaries know their entitlements and take part at every stage, from identification through the Gram Sabha to social audit, because participation is the cheapest form of monitoring a state can buy."