Constitutional Safeguards and Social Transformation in India: Examining Inequality, Institutional Challenges, and the Empowerment of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes

The Constitution of India establishes a framework of safeguards for Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs) to address historically specific forms of discrimination, exclusion and structural disadvantage. This article examines the constitutional foundations of these safeguards and critically considers the relationship between their formal guarantees and the conditions shaping their implementation in education, public employment, economic life and political representation. It adopts a qualitative, documentary and doctrinal approach based exclusively on secondary materials, including constitutional provisions, selected judicial decisions and relevant scholarly publications. The analysis is informed by Ambedkar’s critique of caste, Dumont’s account of hierarchy, Bourdieu’s concepts of capital, Galtung’s theory of structural violence, Fraser’s framework of redistribution and recognition, Sen’s capability approach and Crenshaw’s intersectionality. The article argues that the significance of constitutional safeguards cannot be assessed only through their formal existence or numerical representation. Their transformative potential must also be considered in relation to institutional access, social recognition, participation and the capacity to convert legal entitlements into substantive opportunities. It highlights key concerns including unequal access to educational resources, institutional barriers, changing employment structures, uneven implementation and the difference between descriptive representation and substantive participation. The article’s contribution lies in bringing these dimensions together through an anthropological framework organised around distributive justice, recognition, participation and capability enhancement. Since the study relies on secondary sources and does not undertake fieldwork or a statistical evaluation of policy outcomes, its conclusions are interpretative rather than empirical measurements of programme effectiveness.