HUMAN RIGHTS AND SOCIAL JUSTICE FOR DALITS: AN EVALUATION OF CONSTITUTIONAL PROTECTION MECHANISMS

social sciences

With the enactment of the Constitution of India in 1950, measures were put in place to secure equality of status for the disadvantaged groups. In this paper we shall evaluate the constitutional protection mechanisms constructed to protect human rights and ensure social justice for the Scheduled Castes. In light of the key research question what causes the persistent divergence between constitutional guarantees and actual grounded implementation, this research examines the link between the civil entitlements in Part III, the developmental directives in Part IV and the oversight machinery in Part XVI. The doctrinal study looks at the foundational character of Article 17, the evolution of substantive equality under Article 15 and 16 and the institutional ambit of the National Commission for Scheduled Castes under Article 338. It also looks at how the Supreme Court has interpreted Article 21 to mean that caste-based degradation amounts to violation of one’s right to live with human dignity. The investigation reveals that although constitutional structure provides crucial legal protection and grants justification for affirmative action, social justice cannot be delivered due to the deficit of implementation. Systemic delays, high judicial pendency in atrocity trials, and limited institutional enforcement capacity are understood to lead to realities which escape constitutional provisions. The article ends with academic proposals that can enhance existing statutory and constitutional monitoring mechanisms.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.