Judgment

KRISHNA IYER, J. :- 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, becom