KRISHNA IYER, J. - (1.) A dispute between the appellant mill (the Strawboard Manufacturing Company Ltd.) and its workmen, regarding a scheme of gratuity, was referred to the Industrial Tribunal, way back in Feburary 1958; and, long 19 years later, this Court is pronouncing on the validity of the award made by the Tribunal in favour of the workmen : Small wonder the respondent workmen, after this tiring and traumatic tantalization, have not turned up to argue their cause, although Shri Parekh, as amicus curiae, has filled the gap. Such an unhappy and not infrequent phenomenon as considerable delay in adjudication and implementation is destructive of industrial peace and productive of disenchantment with labour jurisprudence. Naturally, even constitutional provisions and governmental decisions about labout and concern for its welfare cease to achieve the desired goals when the legal process limps and lingers and rights turn illusory when remedies prove elusive. The life of rights is remedies and a jurisprudence of ready reliefs alone can inhibit the weaker numbers of our land asking the disturbing question : 'Is Law Dead?. Dicey wrote long ago : "The saw ubi jus ibi remedium, becomes from this point of view something much more important than a mere tautological proposition. In its bearing upon constitutional law, it means that the Englishmen whose labours gradually formed the complicated set of laws and institutions which we call the Constitution, fixed their minds far more intently on providing remedies for the enforcement of particular rights of for averting definite worngs, than upon any declarations of the Rights of Man or Englishmen." (Jurisprudence of Remedies : University of Pennsylvania Law Review Vol. 117, Nov. 1968, p. 1, 16)
(2.) IT is more than rhetoric to say that courts belong to be people. 'Judges occupy the public's bench of justice. They implement the public's sense of justice'. If the Courts are the fulcrum of the justice-system, there is a strong case for the reform of Court methodology and bestowal of attention on efficient management of judicial administration. Otherwise, the courts may be so overloaded or so mismanaged that they grind to a halt and citizens' exercise of their rights discouraged or furstrated. The vital aspects of the jurisprudence of remedies include speeding the pace of litigation 'from the cradle to the grave'. We are reluctant to make these self-critical observations about putting our house in order, but when the consumers of justice like workmen lose interest in the judicial process and are absent, legislative unawareness of research and development as to the needs of courts and simplification and acceleration o the judicative apparatus become matters of national concern. Law's delays are in some measure, caused by legislative inaction in making competent, radical change in the procedural laws and sufficient financing and modernising of the justice system as a high priority programme. The chequered career of this lis and its zig zag climb up the precipice of justice contextually deserves brief narration. The order of reference was made early in 1958, the usual processual exercise before the Tribunal resulted in an award on 1/05/1958 where the tribunal refused the relief bearing on gratuity. The disappointed workers challeged the award before the High Court which set it aside in November 1963 - too long a hibernation in the High Court for a labour dispute where prompt adjudication is the essence of industrial peace. Anyway, when the case came back to the tribunal, its decision took another six inscrutable years and, on 31/10/1969, a fresh award was whereunder the tribunal framed a gratuity scheme of gave the guidelines thereof. This time the appellant mill straight came to the Supreme Court with the present appeal for which special leave was granted in a limied way, in the sense that it was confined to the question 'whether the correct principles on which gratuity should be payable have been followed in this case or not.' It is a fact, though unfortunate, that this labour litigation arrived in this Court in 1970 but its final chapter is being written by this judgment only in 1977. And it is noteworthy that the facts are brief, the legal issues small, the arguments brief and this judgment, but for general observations and traditional reference to rulings cited at the bar could have been judiciously abbreviated.
(3.) THE main battle at the bar has been over the correct principles in a scheme of grautity for factory workers and further whether those priciples have been departed from under the award assailed by the appellant. We may mention, at this stage, that the Parliament has enacted the Payment of Gratuity Act, 1972, which has come into force with effect from 16/09/1972. Section 4 (5) of the said Act gives an option to the workers to choose between the gratuity scheme under the award and the one under the statute. Had the workers been represented before this Court it might have been possible for us finally to close this controvercy or even produce a reasonable solution by discussion and negotiation and persuade them to opt for one or the other scheme. Early finality, credible certainly and mutually assented solutions are the finer processes of conflict-resolution - a pursuit which baffles us here because of labour's absence. All that we can do, therefore, is to adjudicate upon the correctness or otherwise of the principles which have gone into the gratuity scheme prepared by the tribunal in the light of the rulings of this Court and the canons of industrial law. We now proceed to itemise the grounds of attack levelled by Shri I. N. Shroff for the appellant and assay their worth in the light of the submissions in defence of the award made by Shri . P. H. Parekh appearing as amicus curiae. Even here we may place on record our appreciation of Shri Parekh's services to the Court and the fairness of Shri Shroff in making his points on behalf of the appellant.;