The Constitution and Social Change

Why this chapter matters for UPSC: This is the sociology book's chapter on democracy, and it links GS1 (society) with GS2 (polity). It asks how a Constitution built on equality and social justice works in a deeply unequal society, and answers through three cases: the Constitution and the courts, Panchayati Raj, and the competition of interest groups and parties. Mains has asked about the Preamble's adjectives, the effectiveness of local self-government, the impact of women's reservation in panchayats, khap panchayats as extra-constitutional authorities, and how pressure groups and business associations shape policy. NCERT renamed the chapter in the 2026-27 reprint, from "The Story of Indian Democracy" to "The Constitution and Social Change", and cut it by more than half; this page covers both texts and marks what was dropped.

Contemporary hook: The 73rd Amendment's promise of women in local government has grown beyond its one-third floor. The Ministry of Panchayati Raj counts over 14.5 lakh women elected representatives, around 46 per cent of the total (PIB, 11 March 2026), and 21 States and 2 Union Territories had raised women's reservation in panchayats to 50 per cent (PIB, 6 February 2024). The same idea reached Parliament when the 106th Amendment, reserving one-third of seats in the Lok Sabha and State Assemblies for women, came into force on 16 April 2026.

🧠 First Principles — Read This First

Democracy is more than voting. In a direct democracy all citizens take public decisions themselves, which works only in small groups; modern societies are representative democracies, in which citizens elect officials at every level from panchayats to Parliament. NCERT notes a growing feeling that democracy should involve people "more regularly" than a vote every five years, which is why participatory democracy and decentralised governance have become popular. Panchayati Raj is its main example.

The Constitution is a tool for social justice, not just a rulebook. India's democratic values grew from the anti-colonial struggle, which asked whether democracy meant only political freedom or also economic freedom and social justice. The Karachi Resolution of 1931 and the Preamble answer: justice "social, economic and political" and equality "of status and opportunity". The Constitution has the potential to extend the meaning of social justice, and courts and social movements have used it that way.

Democracy works through competing interests. Different groups (castes, classes, regions, industrialists, workers, farmers) press their claims on the state through parties, interest groups, pressure groups and movements. Not all groups have equal power: dominant castes capture gram sabhas, money buys votes, and some argue that dominant classes control the state. The chapter's lesson is that democratisation in an unequal society is a continuing struggle.

PART 1 — Quick Reference

The Constitution: Key Dates (NCERT, Class XI and the Assembly's record)

The 73rd Amendment: NCERT's Box and the Constitution's Text

Courts Widening Rights (Box 3.6 in 2021-22; Box 3.1 in 2026-27)

What the 2026-27 Reprint Changed

The chapter was renamed "The Constitution and Social Change" and cut from about 7,400 to 3,300 words. Dropped: the introduction on direct, representative and participatory democracy; the section on the Constitution's core values, including the Mahabharata box (Bhrigu and Bharadvaja), Ambedkar on liberty, equality and fraternity, the 1928 draft, the Karachi Resolution and the Preamble; the Constituent Assembly debates; "competing interests"; the boxes on caste panchayats (khaps), the Soompa sarpanch election and the Dhorela campaign meeting; the introduction to parties and pressure groups; and the Mumbai "world class city" box. Kept: constitutional norms and social justice, the whole Panchayati Raj section, tribal areas and the Bhuria Committee, democratisation and inequality, and parties, interest and pressure groups with Weber's box. Three new exercise questions ask about political parties, how pressure groups form and the role of interest groups.

PART 2 — Concepts & Narrative

Democracy: Representative, Participatory, Decentralised

"Democracy is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people." In a direct democracy all citizens, without intermediaries, take public decisions, which is practical only in small groups such as a community organisation, a tribal council or a union local. Modern societies offer few chances for it, so the common form today, whether for a town of 50,000 or a nation of a billion, is representative democracy: citizens elect representatives to panchayats, municipal boards, State Assemblies and Parliament. Because democracy "should not just mean casting a vote every five years", participatory democracy (members of a group or community take major decisions collectively) and decentralised governance have gained ground. NCERT's chapter uses Panchayati Raj as the major example of grassroots democracy. (The 2026-27 reprint drops this introduction and opens with constitutional norms.)

The Constitution: Core Values (2021-22 print)

NCERT begins the story in the colonial period. The British introduced western education to produce a middle class that would help them rule; instead, educated Indians used western liberal ideas of democracy, social justice and nationalism against colonial rule, an unintended consequence. But democratic values are not purely western. Indian epics and folk traditions are full of dialogue and argument. NCERT's Box 3.1 retells, from Amartya Sen, a passage of the Mahabharata in which Bharadvaja answers Bhrigu's claim that caste reflects skin colour: "if different colours indicate different castes, then all castes are mixed castes", and "We all seem to be affected by desire, anger, fear, sorrow, worry, hunger and labour; how do we have caste differences then?" Modern Indian democracy, like social reform, combined western ideas of equality with traditional ideas of justice.

Colonial rule's discrimination, mass poverty and social inequality deepened the question of what democracy meant: political freedom only, or economic freedom and social justice too, and equal rights for all irrespective of caste, creed, race and gender? NCERT's Box 3.2 quotes B.R. Ambedkar: the French Revolution's three words, "fraternity, liberty and equality", failed to produce equality; "in producing equality, society cannot afford to sacrifice fraternity or liberty", and "the three can coexist only if one follows the way of the Buddha". Ambedkar made the same point to the Constituent Assembly on 25 November 1949, as NCERT's Class XI book records: "We must make our political democracy a social democracy as well. Political democracy cannot last unless there lies at the base of it social democracy."

The vision emerged during the freedom struggle. In 1928 Motilal Nehru and eight other leaders drafted a constitution for India. In 1931 the Karachi session of the Indian National Congress resolved what independent India's constitution should contain: a vision of democracy that meant "not just formal holding of elections but a substantive reworking of the Indian social structure".

The Preamble (Box 3.4). "WE, THE PEOPLE OF INDIA, having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a [SOVEREIGN SOCIALIST SECULAR DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC] and to secure to all its citizens: JUSTICE, social, economic and political; LIBERTY of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship; EQUALITY of status and opportunity; and to promote among them all FRATERNITY assuring the dignity of the individual and the [unity and integrity of the Nation]", adopted, enacted and given to ourselves "this twenty-sixth day of November, 1949". The bracketed words "socialist", "secular" and "integrity" were added by the Forty-second Amendment in 1976. On 25 November 2024, in Dr. Balram Singh v. Union of India, the Supreme Court dismissed petitions challenging that insertion. NCERT's point: the Preamble seeks "not just political justice but also social and economic justice", and equality "not just about equal political rights but also of status and opportunity".

The Constituent Assembly Debates (2021-22 print)

NCERT notes that the Constitution's vision and the way it was made were both democratic, emerging from "intense and open discussions" in the Constituent Assembly. In 1939 Gandhi wrote in Harijan, in an article called "The Only Way", that "the Constituent Assembly alone can produce a constitution indigenous to the country and truly and fully representing the will of the people", based on "unadulterated adult franchise for both men and women". The demand was conceded in 1945, and elections followed in 1946. NCERT says the elections were held in July 1946 and that "in August 1946" the Congress's Expert Committee moved a resolution declaring India a Republic in the Assembly; but the Assembly did not meet until 9 December 1946, and it was Jawaharlal Nehru who moved the Objectives Resolution there on 13 December 1946, adopted on 22 January 1947 (Constituent Assembly Debates). Its members were chosen by indirect election by the members of the provincial legislative assemblies, broadly on the Cabinet Mission plan (NCERT, Class XI).

On social justice the Assembly debated whether the state should be bound to particular duties: the right to employment, social security, land reform, property rights and panchayats. NCERT's snippets (Box 3.5):

• K.T. Shah argued that the right to useful employment should be made real by a categorical obligation on the state to provide work to every able citizen.
• B. Das opposed dividing the government's functions into justiciable and non-justiciable ones: "it is the primary duty of Government to remove hunger and render social justice to every citizen".
• B.R. Ambedkar replied that the Draft Constitution "only provides a machinery for the government of the country", but whoever captures power "will have to respect these Instruments of Instructions which are called Directive Principles"; they may not be answerable in court, "but he will certainly have to answer for them before the electorate at election time".
• On land reform Nehru said law could not stand in the way of social forces: "If law and Parliaments do not fit themselves into the changing picture, they cannot control the situation."
• To tribal leaders such as Jaipal Singh, Nehru gave an assurance to protect tribal people "from possibly their rapacious neighbours" and help them advance.
• When the Assembly adopted the title Directive Principles of State Policy for rights the courts could not enforce, it added principles unanimously: K. Santhanam's clause that the state shall organise village panchayats as units of self-government (now Article 40); T.A. Ramalingam Chettiar's clause on cottage industries on cooperative lines in rural areas (now in Article 43); and Thakurdas Bhargava's addition that the state should organise agriculture and animal husbandry on modern lines (now Article 48).

Competing Interests and Constitutional Norms

India's plural society is divided by religion, caste, the rural-urban divide, wealth and literacy; the rural poor, the urban working class, the domestic business class and the vocal urban professional class all "clamour for control of the State's resources". Yet some objectives laid down in the Constitution are generally agreed to be just: empowering the poor and marginalised, alleviating poverty, ending caste, and treating all groups equally. Competing interests do not always follow class lines: closing a factory that emits toxic waste protects the health of those around it, a matter of life, but the closure costs jobs, and livelihood too is "a matter of life that the Constitution protects".

Law and justice. "The essence of law is its force"; law carries the power of the state to compel obedience. "The essence of justice is fairness." Every legal system works through a hierarchy of authorities, and the basic norm from which all others flow is the Constitution: "The Indian Constitution is India's basic norm." Laws are made and implemented by authorities it specifies, courts interpret them, and the Supreme Court is "the ultimate interpreter of the Constitution".

The Supreme Court has enhanced Fundamental Rights. A right "includes all that is incidental to it": the "terse words of Article 21" on life and liberty have been read to include livelihood, health, shelter, education and dignity, so that "life" means "more than mere animal existence". These readings have brought relief to tortured prisoners and bonded labourers, against environmental damage, and for primary health care and education. The Court read the Directive Principle of "equal pay for equal work" into Article 14, helping plantation and agricultural labourers. The table in Part 1 gives a case for each point.

The Constitution "has the potential for the meaning of social justice to be extended", and social movements have helped courts and authorities interpret rights in line with contemporary understanding. It "remains a means to channelise and civilise political power towards social welfare". NCERT's example: K. Santhanam's directive on village panchayats became, "after forty odd years", a constitutional imperative through the 73rd Amendment in 1992.

Panchayati Raj and Rural Social Transformation

Panchayati Raj "translates literally to 'Governance by five individuals'". Grassroots democracy is "not an alien import", but in a society of sharp inequalities, participation is hindered by gender, caste and class. Traditional caste panchayats have usually represented dominant groups and often take decisions "that go against both democratic norms and procedures".

When the Constitution was drafted, panchayats were not in it, and many members were disappointed. Ambedkar, drawing on his own experience, argued that local elites and upper castes were so entrenched that local self-government would mean continued exploitation of the downtrodden. In the Assembly on 4 November 1948 he asked: "What is the village but a sink of localism, a den of ignorance, narrow-mindedness and communalism?" Gandhi, by contrast, saw each village as a self-sufficient unit and gram swarajya as the ideal after independence. The compromise was Santhanam's directive principle.

The history between 1950 and 1992 is told in NCERT's Class XI Indian Constitution at Work: the Community Development Programme of 1952 sought people's participation in local development; a three-tier Panchayati Raj system was then recommended for rural areas, and States such as Gujarat and Maharashtra adopted elected local bodies around 1960; but in many States these bodies lacked powers and funds, were dissolved or had their elections postponed. In 1989 the P.K. Thungon Committee recommended constitutional recognition for local bodies, and in 1992 Parliament passed the 73rd (rural) and 74th (urban) Amendments, in force in 1993.

The 73rd Amendment gave constitutional status to Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs). Local bodies in rural and municipal areas must now be elected every five years, and "control of local resources is given to the elected local bodies". NCERT's box on the three-tier system describes a pyramid with the Gram Sabha, "the entire body of citizens in a village", at its base, electing the local government and ideally providing an open forum for discussion and the inclusion of weaker sections. The Amendment came into force on 24 April 1993, which is why 24 April is observed as National Panchayati Raj Day (PIB, 2024).

Women. The 73rd and 74th Amendments reserved one-third of seats in all elected local bodies, rural and urban, for women: "for the first time it brought women into elected bodies" with decision-making powers. NCERT records that the 1993-94 elections "brought in 800,000 women into the political processes in a single election". (NCERT adds that "17 per cent" of seats are reserved for SC and ST women; the Constitution states no such percentage. Article 243D reserves not less than one-third of the SC and ST seats for SC and ST women, within the overall one-third for women.)

Powers and responsibilities. Panchayats are to prepare plans for economic development, promote schemes for social justice, levy and collect taxes, duties, tolls and fees, and help devolve government responsibilities, especially finances. Their social welfare duties include burning and burial grounds, registering births and deaths, child welfare and maternity centres, cattle pounds, family planning and agriculture; their development work includes roads, public buildings, wells, tanks, schools, cottage industries and minor irrigation; and members monitor schemes such as IRDP and ICDS. Income comes from taxes on property, professions, animals and vehicles, cess on land revenue, rentals and grants through the Zilla Panchayat. Panchayat offices are expected to display the funds received and used, so that people have a "right to information" and can question decisions. Nyaya Panchayats in some States hear petty civil and criminal cases, can fine but not sentence, and have been "particularly effective in punishing men who harass women for dowry". The Constitution lists 29 subjects that States may devolve to panchayats in its Eleventh Schedule.

Voices from the ground. NCERT's boxes show what the reform meant. Kalavati, a Dalit woman, was apprehensive about contesting; as a panchayat member her confidence grew and, most importantly, "she has a name": before, she was only "Ramu's mother" or "Hiralal's wife" (recorded by Mahila Samakhya). In Uttarakhand, where men are often away in the defence services and women do most of the work, women set up van panchayats to raise nurseries, plant saplings and police forests against illegal felling; the Chipko movement began in this area. A training campaign for unlettered women used a cloth phad (a folk scroll) to tell of two villages: sad Dhukipur, whose corrupt pradhan Bimla spent school money on her own house, and happy Sukhipur, whose pradhan Najma built a working health centre and a road; the message was that voting or winning was not enough without knowing what a candidate stands for.

Panchayati Raj in Tribal Areas

Many tribal areas have a rich tradition of grassroot democracy. In Meghalaya the Khasis, Jaintias and Garos have political institutions centuries old, working at village, clan and state levels; among the Khasis each clan had its own council, the Durbar Kur, presided over by the clan headman. Yet much of Meghalaya lies outside the 73rd Amendment, perhaps because policymakers did not wish to interfere with tribal institutions. (Article 243M excludes Nagaland, Meghalaya and Mizoram, the hill areas of Manipur with District Councils, and the Scheduled and tribal areas under Article 244, unless Parliament extends the Part.)

The sociologist Tiplut Nongbri warns that tribal institutions "need not necessarily be democratic". Commenting on the Bhuria Committee report, she argues that despite the egalitarian ethos of tribal societies, stratification is not absent, tribal political institutions are "marked by open intolerance to women", and social change has distorted them so that it is hard to tell what is traditional (Nongbri 2003). The Bhuria Committee submitted its report on 17 January 1995, and Parliament extended Part IX to the Fifth Schedule Areas by the Panchayats (Extension to the Scheduled Areas) Act, 1996 (PESA), published on 24 December 1996. NCERT's Class XI book explains its logic: Adivasi communities have their own customs for managing forests and water, so the Act gives more powers to Gram Sabhas, whose consent elected panchayats must obtain in many matters. Ten States have notified Fifth Schedule Areas: Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Rajasthan and Telangana (Ministry of Panchayati Raj).

Democratisation and Inequality

Democratisation is hard in a society with a long history of inequality based on caste, community and gender. Members of some groups are not informed of village meetings; Gram Sabhas are often controlled by "a small coterie of rich landlords usually hailing from the upper castes or landed peasantry", who decide on development and funds, "leaving the silent majority as mere onlookers".

The 2021-22 print illustrates this with three newspaper boxes:

• Bound by Honour (Box 3.11). Caste panchayats reasserting themselves as "guardians of village morality". In October 2004 the Rathi khap panchayat in Asanda village, Jhajjar district, ordered Sonia, married for a year, to dissolve her marriage with Ram Pal because they shared a gotra (the Hindu Marriage Act recognises such unions), abort her child and accept her husband as a brother; the couple could live together again only after the High Court ordered police protection.
• Role of wealth and privilege (Box 3.12). In Soompa, Rajasthan, the sarpanch seat was reserved for women, but the contest was seen as one between the candidates' husbands, a liquor-shop owner and a rich landowner.
• Social movements for participation (Box 3.13). At a meeting in Dhorela village, an NGO-supported candidate, Tara, read out a manifesto promising not to take bribes and to spend no more than ₹2,000 on campaigning, against the buying of votes with alcohol and jaggery: "low cost elections not only allow the poor to participate, they also make corruption-free panchayats" possible.

Political Parties, Pressure Groups and Democratic Politics

Different groups seek to make their voices heard, and the question is whether all are comparable: can an illiterate peasant make her case as convincingly as an industrialist? None acts alone. Industrialists form associations such as the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) and the Associated Chambers of Commerce (ASSOCHAM); workers form trade unions such as the Indian National Trade Union Congress (INTUC) and the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU); farmers form unions such as the Shetkari Sangathan; agricultural labourers have their own unions.

Weber on parties (Box 3.15). "Whereas the genuine place of classes is within the economic order, the place of status groups is within the social order … But parties live in a house of power." A party's goal may be a "cause" (a programme for ideal or material ends) or "personal" (sinecures, power and honour for the leader and followers) (Weber 1948).

All groups do not have the same access or power. Some argue that the idea of pressure groups underestimates the power of dominant groups of class, caste or gender, and that it is more accurate to say that dominant classes control the state. This "does not negate the fact that social movements and pressure groups also continue to play a very important role in a democracy", as Chapter 8 shows.

Whose city? (Box 3.16, 2021-22 print). Planners wanting Mumbai to become a "global city" proposed an express ring freeway reachable from anywhere in ten minutes; the Vision Mumbai document by the consultancy McKinsey planned mass housing for the poor on salt-pan land outside the city. For the poor, streets are bazaars, melas and places to live and work. A slum dweller answers: "We are in fact human earthmovers and tractors … How can it be a world-class city without a place for its poor?" (Anand 2006). NCERT asks whether the poor can influence political parties more than consultancy firms, because parties can be voted out.

PART 3 — UPSC Integration

NCERT's Answers to Its Own Exercise Questions

Exam Strategy

For Prelims: Karachi Resolution 1931; first sitting 9 December 1946; Objectives Resolution moved by Nehru, 13 December 1946; Article 40 (K. Santhanam), 43 (cottage industries), 48 (agriculture and animal husbandry); 73rd Amendment in force 24 April 1993; intermediate tier optional for States of 20 lakh or less; one-third of SC/ST seats for SC/ST women; DPC under Art. 243ZD (74th Amendment); Eleventh Schedule's 29 subjects; Article 243M exclusions; PESA 1996 and the ten Fifth Schedule States; Shakti Vahini (2018).

For Mains: for local-government questions, combine NCERT's sociology (dominant castes, money, women's experience in Kalavati's box, tribal institutions per Nongbri) with the constitutional design (SEC, SFC, Eleventh Schedule) and the latest numbers on women representatives. For pressure-group questions, use NCERT's definitions, FICCI and ASSOCHAM as business associations, the Budget box and the dominant-class critique.

Avoid: writing that the 73rd Amendment created the District Planning Committee (it is Art. 243ZD of the 74th); stating a "17 per cent" reservation for SC/ST women as a constitutional rule; dating the Objectives Resolution to August 1946.

Practice Questions

Practice (UPSC-pattern, not past papers). Mains questions 1 to 3 adapt NCERT's own exercises.

Prelims:

1. The Directive Principle that the State shall organise village panchayats, now Article 40, was moved in the Constituent Assembly as an amendment by:
   (a) B.R. Ambedkar
   (b) K. Santhanam
   (c) K.T. Shah
   (d) Thakurdas Bhargava

2. Consider the following statements about the Constitution (73rd Amendment) Act, 1992:
   

   1. Panchayats at the intermediate level may not be constituted in a State with a population not exceeding twenty lakh.
      
   2. Not less than one-third of the seats reserved for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes are reserved for women of those groups.
      
   3. It inserted Article 243ZD on District Planning Committees.
      Which of the statements given above are correct?
      (a) 1 and 2 only
      (b) 2 and 3 only
      (c) 1 and 3 only
      (d) 1, 2 and 3

3. Under Article 243M, Part IX of the Constitution (Panchayats) does not apply to which of the following States?
   (a) Assam, Tripura and Sikkim
   (b) Nagaland, Meghalaya and Mizoram
   (c) Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur and Nagaland
   (d) Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Odisha

4. In Shakti Vahini v. Union of India (2018), the Supreme Court:
   (a) upheld the authority of caste panchayats to settle marriage disputes
   (b) held that no khap or other panchayat can interfere with the marriage choice of consenting adults, and issued preventive, remedial and punitive directions
   (c) extended Part IX of the Constitution to Fifth Schedule Areas
   (d) struck down reservation for women in panchayats

Mains:

1. "Interest groups are part and parcel of a functioning democracy." Discuss with examples from India. (150 words)
2. The 73rd Amendment has been monumental in bringing a voice to the people in the villages. Discuss, with reference to women and Dalits. (250 words)
3. Write a note on the ways the Indian Constitution touches people's everyday life. (150 words)
4. "Tribal institutions in themselves need not necessarily be democratic." Examine this view in the context of PESA and tribal self-government. (250 words)

📦 Revision Capsule

Sources

• NCERT, Social Change and Development in India (Class XII), ch. 3 "The Story of Indian Democracy" (2021-22 print) and "The Constitution and Social Change" (Reprint 2026-27): 2021 book archive, Wayback copy; 2026-27 book archive.
• NCERT, Indian Constitution at Work (Class XI), ch. 1 "Constitution: Why and How?" and ch. 8 "Local Governments": ncert.nic.in PDF, ch. 1; ncert.nic.in PDF, ch. 8.
• Constitution of India (as on 11 November 2025), Arts 40, 43, 48, 243-243O, 243ZD, Eleventh Schedule: Legislative Department, Constitution of India.
• Constituent Assembly Debates, 9 December 1946, 13 December 1946, 22 January 1947 and 4 November 1948: constitutionofindia.net, 9 Dec 1946; 13 Dec 1946; 22 Jan 1947; 4 Nov 1948.
• Supreme Court of India: State of U.P. v. Raj Narain, 24 January 1975: Indian Kanoon; Randhir Singh v. Union of India, 22 February 1982: Indian Kanoon; Olga Tellis v. Bombay Municipal Corporation, 10 July 1985: Indian Kanoon; Shakti Vahini v. Union of India, 27 March 2018: Indian Kanoon; Dr. Balram Singh v. Union of India, 25 November 2024: Indian Kanoon.
• The Panchayats (Extension to the Scheduled Areas) Act, 1996 (Act 40 of 1996), Gazette of India Extraordinary, 24 December 1996: Indian Kanoon; Ministry of Panchayati Raj, State-wise details of notified Fifth Schedule Areas: panchayat.gov.in PDF; NIRDPR, Assessment of Implementation of PESA (Bhuria Committee report date): nirdpr.org.in PDF.
• PIB (Ministry of Panchayati Raj): "Sashakt Panchayat-Netri Abhiyan Places Women at the Helm of Grassroots Democracy", 11 March 2026: pib.gov.in; "Participation of Women in Panchayats", 6 February 2024: pib.gov.in; National Panchayati Raj Day colloquium, April 2024: pib.gov.in.
• Constitution (One Hundred and Sixth Amendment) Act, 2023, commencement notification S.O. 1922(E), 16 April 2026: egazette PDF.