The four fundamental principles and rights at work are intrinsic and with a pragmatic relevance that also find resonance in the Constitution of India through its Fundamental Rights and Directive Principles. Our interpretation through a Rawlsian prism also adds to our understanding of these four fundamental principles. An evaluation of the Indian context points out that more than 90 per cent of the workforce is informal workers and that the proportion of informal workers is also increasing in the organised sector. Further, our analysis indicates shortcomings in the four fundamental principles. Their freedom to organise is limited as most work places do not have any association or union. Forced labour gets manifested in modern forms of slavery that involves debt bondage, trafficking for sexual exploitation and even forced marriage. Children, besides being forced into work under modern forms of slavery, are also seen dotting the informal economy – a common site in many road side eateries or even as domestic help in many a households. Discrimination could get reflected through wages, but also because of lack of opportunities that would foster social mobility. This, in some sense, is also an outcome of the fact that most informal workers do not have any minimum working conditions – they work in an easy to hire and fire mode and without any social security provisions. India needs to work on these.

A one paragraph postscript has been added in January 2015 in response to concerns raised on an earlier draft.