( 1 ) HOW a duly constituted Gram Panchayat can thwart the action of the State Government to allot portion of land to rural landless labourers belonging to Scheduled Caste and Backward Classes of society by a protracted litigation is best reflected by this petition under Article 226 of the Constitution of India filed by Munund Gram Panchayat. The third respondent a registered co-operative society of rural landless Harijan labourers through its Chairman Hemabhai Makwana has with crusaders zeal fought the litigation twice upto the High Court and even upto Supreme Court but in vain.

( 2 ) INDIA is predominantly an agricultural country. According to the 1981 Census nearly 525. 4 million people out of the total population of 685. 14 lived in rural area. Further out of 180. 5 million people who constituted the entire labour force in 1971 about 125. 8 million i. e. 70. 8 per cent of the total work-force were employed in cultivation and agricultural occupations. Agriculture in its broad connotation accounts for approximately fifty per cent of our national income. According to the Central Statistical Organisation the net national product generated in India in 1977-78 was estimated to be Rs. 30621 crores and the number of workers on the land (including land-holders and landless) was 192. 43. But in spite of this agriculture labour occupies the lowest rung of the rural ladder. Social stratification in a village is linked with land and caste which governs status economic power and political influence as much as the level of living which is their consequence. Owner-cultivators with large holdings are at the apex. A major part of the assets in rural areas are concentrated in a few hands. For example in 1971 the top 30% of the rural population claimed nearly 82% of the total assets and within this group the first 10% monopolised as much as 51% of the total assets. On the other hand the lowest 10% per cent possessed a more 0. 1 per cent of the assets and the lower 30% to be counted with a 2% share. The distribution of agricultural holdings the small and marginal farmers who constituted over 70% of the land-holders operated barely 24% of the agriculture land. Agricultural labour is provided mostly by economically and socially backward sections of people viz. Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribes. The very fact that they have continued deficit budgets prove that they are not gainfully employed. They do not spend lavishly rather they spend in Bihar nearly 90% of their income on food. Poverty is the greatest economic evil in welfare state. Agricultural labour who constitutes about one-fifth of the rural work force is the poorest of the poor in India. Fifty per cent of the agricultural labour households are landless and have no assets base. The landless labourers are suffering from a compounded problem of unemployment low and uncertain income and nutritional deficiencies.

( 3 ) THE position of rural poor and their low income is simply the numerical expression of a series of multiple deprivations that taken together add up to lives that are hardly worth-living. These are people with poor land little and or no land people with not enough work people on inadequate diets people with perpetual illness people without the most basic knowledge and skills to improve their lives. They are people who have been denied the right to develop their full human potentials. Justice Bhagwati summarised the position of rural poor and the constitutional safeguards to remedy unjust inequality in the following words : the large majority of our people live in rural areas and rural labour constitutes about 80% of the labour force. Rural labour is mostly unorganised and subjected to massive exploitation and injustice. The real problem is how to end this exploitation and injustice to unorganised rural labour ? The problems which the rural labour faces are almost entirely problems arising from poverty ignorance and illiteracy. They are symptomatic of feudal tradi