India’s labour future held hostage by ancient inequality

It is a moral and political travesty that the Government of India’s upcoming Shram Shakti Niti 2025 — the so-called National Labour and Employment Policy — is ideologically linked to the Yājñavalkya Smṛti.

It is shocking that in 2025 a democratic republic that rests on the Indian Constitution would look backwards to a two-millennia-old text that codified caste hierarchy, gender subjugation, and ritual servitude to frame a labour policy. When a modern nation begins to seek direction from a text that sanctified inequality to guide its future of work, it signals not cultural confidence but constitutional amnesia.

The Shram Shakti Niti 2025 is being projected as a transformative roadmap for India’s 500-million-strong workforce. It promises social security, skill-linkages, digital labour platforms, and a more ‘facilitative’ role for the State. Yet in press statements and policy briefs, the government has repeatedly claimed that this policy draws inspiration from ‘India’s ancient civilisational wisdom’, naming the Yājñavalkya Smṛti among its philosophical anchors.

That reference is not innocent. The Smṛtis were not codes of justice — they were instruments of social control, designed to preserve a graded hierarchy of human worth. The Yājñavalkya Smṛti divided society by birth and prescribed unequal duties, wages, and punishments. It declared that the lowest caste, the Śūdra, must serve the upper orders as his ‘natural occupation’, while wage labour for upper castes was condemned as śva-vṛtti — the ‘livelihood of dogs’. Women were told to live under the guardianship of fathers, husbands, or sons — never independently. Even punishment was calibrated by caste rank — not by crime.

To invoke this text is to symbolically endorse the moral universe of inequality that the Constitution was written to destroy.

The Constitution is not a cultural ornament to be quoted for convenience. It is a radical political manifesto, born from the struggles against both colonial exploitation and caste slavery. Its principal architect, B R Ambedkar — a former labour minister himself — was unequivocal in his condemnation of the Smṛtis. He called them ‘scriptures of slavery’, the moral codes of a society that denied human dignity to the majority in the name of divine order.

To place Yājñavalkya Smṛti at the moral centre of a labour policy is not cultural reverence — it is political regression. It mocks Article 14, which guarantees equality before law; Article 19(1)(g), which assures freedom to choose one’s occupation; and Article 23, which prohibits forced or bonded labour. It undermines the Directive Principles that compel the State to secure just and humane conditions of work and a living wage.

The Smṛti’s worldview and the Constitution’s philosophy are not two complementary sources of Indian wisdom — they are mutually exclusive moral worlds. One sustains hierarchy, the other demands equality. One sanctifies obedience, the other guarantees freedom. For a government that swears by the Constitution to root its labour vision in a caste scripture is not cultural pride — it is constitutional betrayal.

The contradiction between this ideological posturing and India’s lived labour reality is staggering. More than 90% of India’s workforce is informal — without written contracts, fair wages, or social protection. Migrant workers continue to face wage theft, hazardous conditions, and bonded debt.

Instead of confronting these injustices head-on, the Shram Shakti Niti 2025 proposes to make the government a ‘facilitator’ rather than a regulator. It is a euphemism for the State’s withdrawal and deregulation. It is a quiet surrender to corporate capital, a retreat from the State’s duty to protect its workers.

If the government steps back from enforcement, millions already trapped in informal, gendered, and caste-based labour will lose even the fragile protections they have. Rooting this withdrawal in the ‘wisdom’ of the Smṛtis only legitimises the idea that inequality is natural, and exploitation is destiny.

Recasting India

Let’s be clear: this is not an accident of language or a bureaucratic oversight. It is a calculated political move.

The ideological project of Hindutva seeks to recast India from a secular constitutional democracy into a cultural-religious civilisation. Rooting modern policies in ancient texts serves that purpose. It replaces the sovereignty of the people with the sanctity of scriptures. It tells citizens that authority flows not from their consent but from divine tradition.

By citing Yājñavalkya Smṛti in a national policy document, the State transforms labour from a constitutional right into a ritual obligation. It drains workers of agency and replaces their citizenship with servitude.

The Smṛti’s disdain for manual and service labour still echoes in India’s caste-segmented workforce: Dalits cleaning sewers, Adivasis hauling bricks, women sewing garments at half the men’s wage. The ILO’s Decent Work Agenda and our constitutional vision place dignity in labour itself, not in ritual status.

Yet by invoking Yājñavalkya as a guide, the Narendra Modi government symbolically blesses this hierarchy instead of dismantling it. It tells India’s workers that their dignity lies not in their rights, but in their obedience. That is not civilisational wisdom — it is moral decay.

The government must drop all references to scriptural sources and ground the Shram Shakti Niti 2025 in the principles of the Constitution and international labour law — equal pay, occupational safety, social protection, collective bargaining, and strict enforcement.

India is at a dangerous crossroads — between a Constitution that envisions equality and a politics that sanctifies obedience.

The Shram Shakti Niti 2025 can either be a policy of emancipation or a scripture of servitude. The government must decide whether it stands with Yājñavalkya — or with the Constitution of India.

Rejimon Kuttappan is a migrant rights activist, and author of Undocumented. X: @rejitweets. 

(Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.)