Legal interventions for combating gender and social inequality

This study examines the nature and causes of inequalities, social justice, and gender justice in India and how Indian legal system contributed to combat such issues. Since independence reformation of Indian society has been an active agenda and Indian policymakers have always been concerned with the lessening of poverty and inequality. However, between the first five year plan after independence in 1947 and the turn of the century, Indian economic policy making went through a drastic change. Caste, class, family and individual are not only seen as units of social ranking, but are also viewed as ideas implying a value-frame for guiding and shaping of realization and social relations.

Gender justice requires ending the inequalities between women and men that are produced and reproduced in the family, the community, the market and the state. It also requires that typical institutions from justice to economic policymaking are accountable for tackling the injustice and discrimination that keep too many women poor and excluded. The idea of welfare state is that the claims of social justice must be treated as cardinal and paramount. Social justice is not a blind concept or a preposterous dogma. It seeks to do justice to all the citizens of the state.