Navigating Laws and Policies on Equity and Equality in India

India’s Constitution is often called a living document – one that doesn’t just promise equality, but also lays out the tools to actually achieve it. Yet, there’s an important distinction that runs through Indian law and policy: the difference between equality (treating everyone the same) and equity (giving people what they specifically need to reach the same footing). Understanding how India’s laws navigate this distinction – from constitutional provisions to government welfare schemes – is essential to grasping the real challenges of gender justice, caste discrimination, and economic inclusion in contemporary India.

The constitutional foundation: Articles 14, 15, and 16 🔗

India’s approach to equality starts at the very top: the Constitution. Three articles in particular form the bedrock of the country’s legal commitment to fairness.

Article 14: equality before law 🔗

Article 14 states that the State shall not deny to any person equality before the law or equal protection of the laws within the territory of India. Two concepts sit at its core. “Equality before law” – borrowed from British legal tradition – means no one gets special privilege. “Equal protection of the laws” – borrowed from the U.S. Constitution – means the law must be applied equally in equal circumstances. The Supreme Court has declared the rule of law in Article 14 to be a basic feature of the Constitution, meaning it cannot be destroyed even through a constitutional amendment.

Article 14 has been interpreted broadly over the years. In the landmark Visakha v. State of Rajasthan (1997) case, the Supreme Court used it to enforce the fundamental rights of working women against sexual harassment – reading protections for gender equality into the article even where they weren’t explicitly spelled out. Later, in NALSA v. Union of India (2014), the Court held that since Article 14 is framed in gender-neutral terms referring to “all persons,” its protections extend to transgender individuals as well.

Article 15: prohibition of discrimination 🔗

Article 15 takes Article 14’s general principle and makes it specific: the State cannot discriminate against citizens solely on the grounds of religion, race, caste, sex, or place of birth. Crucially, it also bars discrimination in access to public spaces – shops, restaurants, wells, roads – which directly addressed the historical practice of untouchability and upper-caste social exclusion.

But Article 15 goes further than just prohibiting bad treatment. Clauses 3, 4, 5, and 6 of the article actively permit the State to make special provisions for women, children, socially and educationally backward classes, Scheduled Castes (SCs), Scheduled Tribes (STs), and Economically Weaker Sections (EWS). This is where equality gives way to equity – the law acknowledges that some groups need more support, not just equal treatment. Article 15(3), for instance, has served as the foundation for women-focused laws covering maternity benefits, reservation in local bodies, and special working conditions.

Article 16: equality of opportunity in public employment 🔗

Article 16 applies the equality principle specifically to government jobs. It guarantees that all citizens have an equal opportunity to apply for public employment, and bans discrimination based on religion, race, caste, sex, descent, or place of birth. Article 16(4) simultaneously allows the State to reserve posts for backward classes that are not adequately represented in public services. The Supreme Court, in the Indra Sawhney v. Union of India (1992) case, clarified that Articles 14 and 16 must be read together – reservations aren’t exceptions to the equality principle, they are a means of achieving it.

In 2019, the 103rd Constitutional Amendment added Article 16(6), allowing up to 10% reservation for Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) – those from general category families earning less than ₹8 lakh annually – in both government jobs and educational institutions. This pushed total reservations in central institutions to 59.5%, which the Supreme Court upheld in 2022 as constitutional.

Reservations and affirmative action: levelling the field 🔗

India’s reservation system – also referred to as affirmative action – is one of the oldest such programs in the world, dating back to 1950. Its purpose is to correct centuries of structural disadvantage faced by Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and Other Backward Classes (OBCs) through concrete representation in education, employment, and politics.

The current breakdown in central government institutions is as follows: 15% for SCs, 7.5% for STs, 27% for OBCs, and 10% for EWS – totalling roughly 60% reserved seats. The remaining 40% is the open or “general” category, which all candidates including those from reserved categories can compete for on merit. In addition, horizontal reservations operate across all vertical categories for groups like women, persons with disabilities, and ex-servicemen, ensuring that even within reserved quotas, further marginalized subgroups are not overlooked.

There’s an important nuance in how these reservations work. For OBCs, a “creamy layer” concept applies – those OBC members who are relatively affluent (based on income and parental occupation) are excluded from reservation benefits. This ensures the policy actually reaches those who need it most, rather than being captured by economically privileged members of a backward community. No such creamy layer has traditionally applied to SC/ST reservations, though as of 2024-2025, the Supreme Court is actively examining petitions to introduce similar economic criteria for SCs and STs to ensure the most disadvantaged within these groups are prioritized.

The debate around reservations is ongoing. Critics argue that a purely caste-based system fails to account for class mobility within reserved communities. Proponents argue that caste discrimination is deeply structural and cannot be addressed through income-based criteria alone – it requires targeted group-based representation. This is exactly the tension between equality (same rules for all) and equity (differentiated support based on historical disadvantage).

Gender equality: where India stands and what’s being done 🔗

Laws and policies specifically addressing gender equality operate at both the global and domestic level. At the international level, India is a signatory to CEDAW (Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women) and aligned with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, which include SDG 5 on gender equality. Yet, when it comes to measurable outcomes, the data tells a difficult story.

The Global Gender Gap Report 2024 🔗

The World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2024 ranked India 129th out of 146 countries – a drop of two places from 2023. India has closed only 64.1% of its overall gender gap. The picture is most stark in economic participation: Indian women earn approximately ₹40 for every ₹100 that men earn, giving India one of the worst economic gender parity scores in the world, ranked 142nd out of 146 countries in that sub-index. Within South Asia alone, India ranks fifth, behind Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Bhutan.

Political representation is similarly uneven. Women make up only 17.2% of Parliament and hold just 6.9% of ministerial positions, despite India ranking relatively well on the historical head-of-state indicator (due to leaders like Indira Gandhi). At the current global rate of progress, full gender parity worldwide is estimated to take 134 years – far beyond the 2030 SDG target.

Indian labor laws addressing gender 🔗

On the legal front, India has enacted several laws that specifically address gender-based inequities in the workplace. The Maternity Benefit Act, 1961 (amended significantly in 2017) entitles women working in establishments with 10 or more employees to 26 weeks of paid maternity leave – one of the longest in the world. The Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace Act, 2013 (known as the POSH Act) operationalized the Visakha guidelines and mandates that all employers set up Internal Complaints Committees. The Equal Remuneration Act, 1976 prohibits wage discrimination between men and women for the same or similar work – though enforcement remains a persistent challenge, as the wage gap data clearly shows.

The government has also introduced targeted welfare programs to address gender inequality beyond the workplace. The Beti Bachao Beti Padhao (Save the Daughter, Educate the Daughter) campaign aims to address the declining child sex ratio and improve girls’ access to education. The Women’s Reservation Act (2023) – the Constitution’s 106th Amendment – reserves 33% of seats in the Lok Sabha and state assemblies for women, though its implementation is tied to the next delimitation exercise.

Equity in practice: the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana 🔗

One of the most concrete examples of equity-based policymaking in India is the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY), launched in May 2016. The scheme provides subsidized or free LPG (cooking gas) connections exclusively to women from Below Poverty Line (BPL) households. The underlying logic is pure equity: wealthier households already had access to cooking gas, so giving everyone the same subsidy would not have changed anything for the poorest families. By targeting the benefit specifically at economically marginalized women, the policy aimed to correct an existing gap in access.

The scheme provided financial support of ₹1,600 per connection (later revised upward) covering the cost of the cylinder, regulator, hose, and installation – expenses that had previously kept poor households from switching to clean fuel. Under Ujjwala 2.0 (launched in 2021), the first LPG refill and a stove are also provided free of cost. As of 2023, over 10.33 crore families have benefited from the scheme. National LPG coverage rose from 62% in 2016 to nearly 99.8% by 2021 – a dramatic shift driven almost entirely by the PMUY initiative. The International Energy Agency has called it a “game-changer in ending energy poverty.”

Beyond clean fuel access, the scheme has a gendered dimension: because women in poor households bore the brunt of cooking with firewood and coal – suffering disproportionate exposure to indoor air pollution-related illnesses – the policy directly improved women’s health and reduced the time spent on fuel collection. This freed up time for education, economic activity, and childcare. The LPG connection is also registered in the woman’s name, giving her legal ownership and a degree of economic agency. This is equity in action: a policy designed not to treat everyone equally, but to give specific people something specific because they were left behind.

Equality vs. equity: why the distinction matters 🔗

Reading through India’s laws and schemes reveals a consistent, if imperfect, effort to move from formal equality toward substantive equity. Formal equality means the law applies the same way to everyone. Substantive equity means the law accounts for the fact that people start from very different positions, and adjusts accordingly. Articles 14, 15, and 16 of the Constitution do both – they prohibit discrimination while simultaneously permitting special provisions for those who have historically been denied opportunity.

The challenge, as India’s Global Gender Gap ranking and wage data make clear, is that legal provisions alone do not automatically translate into lived equality. Laws like the Equal Remuneration Act exist, but the wage gap persists. Reservations have improved representation of SCs and STs in government employment, but OBC, SC, and ST communities still constitute a fraction of those in senior or high-income positions relative to their 70% share of the population. Policies like PMUY have transformed access to clean energy, but rural women still face barriers in education, digital access, and economic participation.

This gap between policy intent and ground-level outcome is what makes the study of equity and equality laws not just an academic exercise, but an urgent and ongoing conversation. The Constitution provides the framework; the question is whether implementation, enforcement, and sustained political will can close the distance between what the law promises and what people actually experience.

What do you think? India’s Constitution allows for special provisions to promote equity – but when, if ever, should affirmative action policies be scaled back or redesigned? And given that Indian women earn less than half of what men earn on average, what role should labor law reforms play alongside broader social change in closing the gender pay gap?

References

1. https://indiankanoon.org/doc/367586/
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_15_of_the_Constitution_of_India
3. https://www.apnilaw.com/upsc/indian-constitution/right-to-equality-articles-14-18-explained/
4. https://www.clearias.com/reservation-in-india/
5. https://www.outlookindia.com/national/sc-issues-notice-on-plea-to-introduce-creamy-layerstyle-economic-criteria-in-scst-reservations
6. https://www.weforum.org/publications/global-gender-gap-report-2024/digest/
7. https://www.business-standard.com/india-news/global-gender-gap-index-2024-indian-women-earn-rs-40-for-every-rs-100-indian-men-earn-124061200379_1.html
8. https://artha.global/blog/artha-explains-global-gender-gap-report-2024/
9. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pradhan_Mantri_Ujjwala_Yojana
10. https://www.ibef.org/government-schemes/pradhan-mantri-ujjwala-yojana