- (1.) The rather zigzag course of the landmark cases and the tangled web of judicial thought have perplexed one branch of Industrial Law. resulting from obfuscation of the basic concept of 'industry' under the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947 (for Short, the Act). This bizarre situation, 30 years after the Act was passed and industrialization had advanced on a national scale, could apt be allowed to continue longer. So, the urgent need for an authoritative resolution of this confused position which has survived - indeed) has been accentuated by - the judgment of the six-member Beach in Safdarjung, if we may say so with deep respect, has led to a reference to a larger bench of this die-hard dispute as to what an 'industry' under S. 2 (j) means.
(2.) Legalese and logomachy have the genius to inject mystique into com- mon words, alienating the laity in effect from the rule of Jaw. What is the common worker or ordinary employer to do if he is bewildered by a definitional dilemma and is unsure whether his enterprise - say, a hospital, a university, a library, a service club, a local body, a research institute, a panjarapole, a chamber of commerce, a Gandhi Ashram - is an industry at all Natural meaning is nervous of acceptance in court, where the meaning of meanings is lost in uncertain erudition and cases have even cancelled each other out while reading meaning : "I do not think", said Diplock L. J. , "that anywhere, except in court of Law, it would be argued with gravity that a Dutch barn or grain and fodder stores or any ordinary farm buildings are properly described as repositories. A Gloucestershire farmer would say they were far buildings and would laugh at their being called 'repositories' ". In the same spirit. Stamp, J. rejected the argument that the carrying on of the business of a crematorium involved the "subjection of goods or materials to any process" within S. 271 (1) (c) of the Income Tax Act, 1952 as "a distortion of the English language. . I protest against subjecting the English language, and more particularly simple English phrase, to this kind of process of philology and semasiology". Esoterica is anathema for law affecting the common man in the commerce life, and so the starting point for our discussion is the determination to go by t plain, not the possible, sense of the words used in the definition, inform' by the context and purpose of the statute, illumined by its scheme and settingand conceptually coloured by what is an industry at the current developmental stage in our country, in our system of precedents our endeavour must be, as urged by Counsel, to reconcile prior pronouncements, if possible, and to re-consider the question altogether, if necessary. There are no absolutes in law since life, which it serves, is relative. What is an industry in America or the Soviet Union may not be one in India and even in out country what was not an industry decades ago may well be one now. 0ur judgment here has no pontifical flavor but seeks to serve the future hour till changes in the law or in industrial culture occur.
(3.) Law, especially industrial law, which regulates the rights and remedies of the working class, unfamiliar with the sophistications of definitions and shower of decisions, unable to secure expert legal opinion, what with poverty pricing them out of the justice market and denying them the staying power to withstand the multi-decked litigative process, de facto denies social justice if legal drafting is vagarious, definitions indefinite and court rulings contradictory. Is it possible, that the legislative chambers are too pre-occupied with other pressing business to listen to court signals calling for clarification of ambiguous clauses A careful, prompt amendment of S. 2 (j) would have pre-empted this docket explosion before tribunals and courts. This court, perhaps more than the legislative and executive branches, is deeply concerned with law's delays and to devise a prompt delivery system of social justice.;