Socio Legal Issues

Two siblings sit at a dinner table in Dombivli. The brother gets the extra helping of dal and milk because he is the one who will carry the family name; the sister is told to eat what is left. Nobody has broken a law that evening, yet over the years one child grows stronger than the other. This topic asks how law meets harms that start inside the home and the economy rather than in a police station: neglect, sex-selective abortion and child labour. Each has a statute or a constitutional article aimed at it, and each is hard to enforce.

In two minutes

The law tackles the harms that fall most heavily on the girl child and the working child through three routes: constitutional commands (Articles 15(3), 24, 39(e) and (f)), criminal and regulatory statutes (BNS, PCPNDT Act, labour laws) and welfare duties such as maintenance and education.

The rest of this chapter

The full explanation, the cheat sheet, every previous-year question at every mark weight, the quiz and the answer skeletons are part of Law Relating to Women and Children on LexBlox Semester. Sign in to unlock the subject, or read Module 1 of Legal Language and Writing free.