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Be the High Court's judgment right or wrong, its socioeconomic and jurisprudential repercussions for a social Welfare State or a 'Socialist Republic' are sufficiently profound to explain why, from us too, an afterword. Is it otiose to ponder over these matters articulately even though we generally concur in the reasoning and conclusion of our learned colleagues ? Some economic issues of moment, quiet in their legal look but critical in their later portent, come before the Court as has happened now, when, regardless of assent or dissent, the spelt-out opinion of the judges sitting on the same bench, separately or conjointly, becomes the right of the citizen, read in the context of the pregnant provision in Article 141. When major juristic problems of futuristic import involve constitutional probes, a plurality of opinions may bring out if we may mix metaphors-morefacets, shifts in emphasis, finer notes, fresh vistas and seeds of development, not necessarily verbal re-hash or medley of repetitive prolixity. A hundred noetic flowers and some cerebral briars are not a confusing crowd of colours. Judicial perspective vis a vis constitutionality of economic legislation.

(1) [1970] 3 S.C.R. 530.

(2) Towne V.Eigner,245U.S..418=62L.ed. 372,376 (3) Dias Jurisprudence, 4th Edn. p. 625 When confronted by serious constitutional problems, judicial statesmanship drops the craft of a legal tinker or lexicographic borrower but transforms itself into that of social engineer who 'beholds the future in the present and his thoughts are the germs of the flower and fruit of latest time'. He gives conscious expression, in juristic tongue, to the Constitution's implicit purpose grounded on the permanent in terests of man as a progressive. being-here, the little yet large man of India breaking out of an iniquitous system, yet reaching out to a human society, shot with distributive justice. The presence of this people- oriented perspective in the court, as the interpreter of the Constitution and its imperatives and the laws designed to inaugurate a Human Tomorrow, compels us in all humility and aware of inadequacy, to lend our pen to the reversal of the decision under appeal which de facto proceeds on fastidious societal values of vanishing validity. in the changed setting, and is partly founded on exotic juridical doctrines (eminent domain) incongruous with the legitimate realities of the emerging Indian Order as are writ into Article 31 (2) and more unmistakably in Article 31C read (in the manner of Keshvananda Bharati) (1) along side of Article 39(b) and

(c).

The social philosophy of the Constitution shapes creative judicial vision and orientation. Our nation has, as its dynamic doctrine,, economic democracy sans which political democracy is chimerical. We say so because our Constitution, in Parts III and IV and else-where, ensouls such a value system and the debate in this case puts precisely this soul in peril.

Friedman has said in his 'Legal Theory and Social Evolution'.

'The lawyer cannot afford to isolate himself from the social process. His independence can never be more than relative, and it is only a clear awareness of the political, social and constitutional foundations of, his function in general as well as of particular legal problems that enables him to find the proper balance between Stability and progress."(2) Our thesis is that the dialectics of social justice should not be missed if the synthesis of Part III and Part IV is to influence State action and court pronouncements. Constitutional problems cannot be studied in a socio- economic vacuum, since socio-cultural changes are the source of the new values,, and sloughing off old legal thought is part of the process of the new equity-loaded legality. A judge is a social scientist in his role as constitutional invigilator and fails functionally if he forgets this dimension in his complex duties.

"I shall endeavour to show that there are in the contemporary world challenges, social, political and economic, which, if the system cannot meet them, will destroy it. These challenges are not created by lawyers; they certaintly cannot be suppressed by lawyers; they have to be met either by discarding or by adjusting the legal system. Which is to be ?"

A panoramic sociological view-not a narrow legal peep-alone can invest judicial power with capability to help solve the myriad problems of Mankind and Mother Earth. We have divagated to drive home the pertinence and power of poverty to change our social order through law, and the necessity of the constitutional court to appreciate this fundamental logos before voiding any 'law'. Ideas of the Old Order on 'public purpose', illusory compensation, nexus doctrine and 'distributed to subserve the common good' should not reduce lofty constitutional considerations into 'hollow concepts, tea-cup debates and impotent ideas (which) debase modern jurisprudence' and are 'intellectually subversive', to use the indignant expressions of John Batt. Nietzsche once said : 'The great problems are in the streets'. Abraham Lincoln warned that 'the dogmas of the quiet past are no longer adequate to the stormy present.' Our legal doctrines, canons of interpretation and constitutional attitudes must therefore take not of this adaptational potential and response to The scheme of the impugned statute Coming now to the concrete provisions of the Act, tested on the anvil of Article 31(2) and 39(b) and (c), we have to get a hang of the legislative project. Its purpose is to acquire contract ages from a,]]. private sources. The reason for this measure of nationalisation is set out in the 'whereas' paragraphs. In broad terms, it is.... that private contract carriages are being operated in the State in a manner highly detrimental and prejudical to the public interest. it is further claimed that with. a view to prevent such misuse and also to provide better facilities for the transport of passengers and 'to give effect to the policy of the State towards securing that the ownership and control of the material resources of the community are so distributed as best to subserve the common good and that the operation of the economic system does not result in the concentration of wealth and means of production to the common detriment,' acquisition of contract carriages is being resorted to. The requisite declaration contemplated in Article 31C is thus made in the preamble as well as in Section 2 of the Act. Of course, in the light of the Keshavananda Bharati Case (supra) there is in this Court a power-and if demanded, a duty-to examine whether there is real nexus between the legislation and Article 39(b) and (c) or whether the ritualistic declaration is cutely but colourably designed to ward off attack from Article 14, 19 and 31, Make-believes cannot make-do. But if there is a reasonable relation between the two, the Court cannot constitute itself as a super administrator and suggest that there are better ways of achieving the object than what the legislature has chosen to adopt. 'Quo modo' is not for the court.