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Showing contexts for: Problem in The State Of Gujarat And Another vs Shri Ambica Mills Ltd., Ahmedabad, Etc on 26 March, 1974Matching Fragments
(see West Coast Hotel Company v. Parrish2). The piecemeal approach to a general problem permitted by under inclusive classifications, appears justified when it is considered that legislative dealing with such problems is usually an experimental matter. It is impossible to tell how successful a particular approach may be, what dislocations might occur, what evasions might develop. what new evils might be generated in the attempt. Administrative expedients must be forged and tested. Legislators, recognizing these factors, may wish to proceed cautiously, and courts must allow them to (lo so (supra). Administrative convenience in the collection of unpaid accumulations is a factor to be taken into account in adjudging whether the classification is reasonable. A legislation may take one step at a time addressing itself to the phase of the problem which seems most acute to the legislative mind. Therefore, a legislature might select only one phase of one filed for application or a remedy(3). It may be remembered that article 14 does not require that every regulatory statute apply to all in the same business :
The question whether, under article 14, a classification is reasonable or unreasonable must, in the ultimate analysis depend upon the judicial approach to the problem. The great divide in this area lies in the difference between emphasizing the actualities or the abstractions of legisla- tion. The more complicated society becomes, the greater the diversity of its problems and the more does legislation direct itself to the diversities. "Statutes are directed to less than universal situations. Law reflects distinction that exist in fact or at least appear to exist in the judgment of legislators-those, who have the responsibility for making law fit fact. Legislation is essentially empiric. It addresses itself to the more or less crude outside world and not to the neat, logical models of the mind. Classification is inherent in legislation. To recognize (1) 56 L. Ed., 175,180 (2) 310 U.S. 141.
(3) See "Developments-Equal Protection". 82 Harv. Law Rev., 1065, at 1127 (4) See Cox, "The Supreme Court Foreward", 1966 Term, 80 Harv. Law Rev. 91-95.
785marked differences that exist in fact is living law; to disregard practical differences and concentrate on some abstract identities is lifeless logic"(1). That the legislation is directed to practical problems, that the economic mechanism is highly sensitive and complex, that many problems are singular and contingent, that laws are not abstract propositions and do not relate to abstract units and are not to be measured by abstract symmetry, that exact wisdom and nice adaption of remedies cannot be required, that judgment is largely a prophecy based on meagre and uninterpreted experience, should stand as reminder that in this area the Court does not lake the equal protection requirement in a pedagogic manner(supra). In the utilities, tax and economic regulation cases, there are good reasons for judicial self-restraint if not judicial deference to legislative judgment. The legislature after all has the affirmative responsibility. The Courts have only the power to destroy, not to reconstruct. When these are added to the complexity of economic regulation, the uncertainty, the liability to error, the bewildering conflict of the experts, and the number of times the judges have been overruled by events--self-limitation can be seen to be the path to judicial wisdom and institutional prestige and stability(supra).
We must be fastidiously careful to observe the admonition of Mr. Justice Brandeis, Mr. Justice Stone and Mr. Justice Cardozo that we do not "sit as a super-legislature" (see their dissenting opinion in Colgate v. Harvey(2).
Let us look at the problem here in the light of the above discussion. The purpose of the Act is to get unpaid accumulations for utilizing them for the welfare of labour in general. The aim of any legislature would then be, to get the unpaid accumulation from all concerns. So an ideal classification should include all concerns which have 'unpaid accumulations'. But then there are practical problems. Administrative convenience as well as the apprehension whether the experiment., if undertaken as an all-embracing one will be successful, are legitimate considerations in confining the realization of the objective in the first instance to large concerns such as factories employing large amount of labour and', with statutory duty to keep register of wages, paid and unpaid, and the legislature has, in fact,, brought all factories, whether owned by Government of otherwise, within the purview of the definition of 'establishment'. In other words, it is from the factories that the greatest amount of unpaid accumulations could be collected and since, the factories are bound to maintain records from which. the amount of unpaid accumulations could be easily ascertained, the legislature brought all the factories within the definition of 'establishment'. It then addressed itself to other establishments but thought that establishments employing, less than 50 persons need not be brought within the (1) See the observations of Justice- Frankfurter in Morey v. Doud, 354 U.S. 457, 472.