Forty Years On: How Article 23's Ban on Forced Labour Still Polices India's Workplaces

A look back at four decades of Supreme Court jurisprudence under Article 23 of the Constitution — and how the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita has now re-coded the criminal-law backbone that enforces it.

The piece marks four decades of Supreme Court jurisprudence interpreting Article 23 of the Constitution, which bans 'traffic in human beings' and 'begar and other similar forms of forced labour,' and notes that this backbone of criminal enforcement has now been re-coded under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita.

Article 23 is unusual among fundamental rights as it operates horizontally, binding private individuals and not just the State, and courts have read it expansively to cover practices like bonded labour, payment below minimum wage, and debt bondage — situations that do not look like classic slavery but are held to cause the same constitutional harm the framers sought to prohibit.

For exams, remember: Article 23 (Part III, Right against Exploitation) prohibits forced labour and human trafficking, applies against private parties too, has been progressively interpreted by the Supreme Court over 40 years, and its enforcing criminal provisions now stand replaced by the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita.