Introduction

The Constitution of India promises equality of status and opportunity to the citizens. It entrusts a specific duty on the state to minimise inequalities in income and eliminate inequalities in status, facilities and opportunities through social welfare. The aim of the social welfare provisioning by the state is to promote equality of opportunities – with a view to rectifying opportunity gaps of particularly disadvantaged citizens and groups – so that their wealth and earning inequalities are kept to a minimum. Such provisioning has to be secure and sustainable to meet the mandate of equality contemplated under the Constitution. In fact, the state is mandated to secure a decent standard of life, including social and cultural opportunities, for all workers through their work.5 It is, thus, the state's constitutional duty to pursue equitable outcomes for all workers irrespective of the nature of their work and their organisation. This is a broader mandate than the achievement of a decent life through market-based employment relationships. It is a mandate of equity wherein no worker should be left behind in achieving a fulfilling life through work. At the same time, this constitutional mandate is not a guarantee of work. The aim is the achievement of the decent life by means of work. If work – that is, human agency – should be the basis of an equitable decent life, the state must also secure social provisioning linked to work in order to facilitate the decent life of workers when work (including opportunities to work) falls short of delivering such a life. This specific constitutional concern for workers is an instance of the more general concern for the equitable treatment of disadvantaged citizens and groups through social welfare.

As discussed in Chapter 2, the Constitution creates a space for the operation of workers’ individual agency through market exchanges. This is important from the constitutional perspective because individual agency is the basis of the ideal of worker-citizens, as analysed in Chapter 1. However, as noted earlier, the worker-citizen is not an exclusively individualistic ideal. The ideal also signifies a deep relationship with the state. The Constitution entrusts the nation-building initiative to worker-citizens and expects them to be industrious in this collective undertaking. Thus, in spite of the prima facie focus on individual agency, there exists a deep social relationality to the idea of the worker-citizen.