Comment in 150 words: Increasingly higher focus on Directive Principles of State Policy. (2014, 10 Marks)
Part IV was meant to work through the ballot box: B. R. Ambedkar expected governments that ignored the directives to answer to the electorate. Once treated as a moral preface, the directives now drive legislation, litigation and electoral competition. Article 37‘s claim that they are fundamental in the governance of the country is being taken literally.
Why the Focus Has Risen
- Resources: non-justiciability rested on a thin fiscal base in 1950; growth after 1991 made enforceable welfare affordable.
- Rights-based thinking: courts and civil society reframed welfare as entitlement, while Sustainable Development Goals commitments (in the spirit of Article 51) mapped onto Part IV aims such as hunger, health and schooling.
- Competitive democracy: coalition and later majoritarian politics both found welfare a reliable route to votes.
How It Shows
- Judicial: Part IV is read into Article 21, as in the right-to-food orders in PUCL (from 2001) and M. K. Ranjitsinh (2024), which read Article 48A with Articles 14 and 21 to find a right against climate harm. It also defines reasonable restrictions, as in Mirzapur Moti Kureshi (2005) on cattle slaughter.
- Legislative: directives become statutes: the RTE Act 2009, the National Food Security Act 2013, the VB–G RAM G Act 2025 (125 days of rural work), and the labour codes (in force November 2025) covering gig workers.
- Electoral welfarism: S. Subramaniam Balaji (2013) held that manifesto freebies were not a corrupt practice, linking them to Part IV; cash transfers to women and free grain now anchor campaigns, while the freebies challenge in Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay awaits a larger bench.
- Cooperative federalism: NITI Aayog’s SDG India Index ranks states on Part IV-type goals; the Aspirational Districts Programme (2018) targets the laggards; Article 40 works through the 73rd Amendment.
- Neglected directives revived: a uniform civil code (Article 44) in Uttarakhand (2025), with Bills passed in Gujarat, Assam and Madhya Pradesh in 2026.
Limits
- The focus is selective: Article 43A on worker participation stays dormant, and Article 38(2) sits beside rising inequality.
- Competitive freebies strain state finances and can crowd out capital spending.
- Delivery trails promise: rural work averaged near fifty days against a hundred-day guarantee.
Conclusion
The rising focus vindicates the framers’ bet that the directives would bind through politics. It also politicises them: the test is whether Part IV is pursued as a coherent economic democracy, as Ambedkar intended, or mined article by article for electoral advantage.