Judgment

KRISHNA IYER, J. :- If Kind Midas suffered from the curse of turning into gold everything he touched, Indo-Anglian legalism suffers from the pathology of making mystiques of simple words of common usage when they are found in the Corpus Juris. We cannot afford this luxury of legalistics, the besetting sin of law-in-action. This said comment is provoked by the prolonged debate carried on with logomachic dexterity in this appeal against a meticulous judgment where the semantic complexity and definitional intricacy of innocent words like syllabus, courses of instruction and publish and the procedural mechanics for prescribing textbooks for secondary education set out in a fasciculus of sections have been investigated.

2. Law, in a democratic, pluralist society spreads over vast spaces where the Constitution of developing countries, like ours, commands the State to adventure into a profusion of welfare measures and commits to the judicial process the interpretation of legislation not to obfuscate but to objectify the meaning of enactments. The Justice System ceases to be functional if courts do not make the technology of statutory construction serve the betterment of society. In Cardozos lofty diction :-

"We may figure the task of the judge, if we please, as the task of a translator, the reading of signs and symbols given from without. None the less, we will not set men to such a task, unless they have absorbed the spirit, and have filled themselves with a love, of the language they must read." *1

* 1. The Nature of the Judicial Process by Benjamin N. Cardozo p. 174.

If a broad and viable reading of statutory language were not adopted by Judges filled with the wish to make things work according to social justice courts may be classed with the dinosaurs.

3. The State of Madhya Pradesh, alive to its obligation to promote education in widest commonality, with accent on quality and cost, among the impressionable generation, undertook the task of statutory regulation of teaching material for primary education, middle school education, and secondary education. Then followed, in conformance with the rule of law, executive action, legislative measures, regulatory procedures and infra-structures, necessary for the incarnation of a State-directed but expert-oriented scheme of pre-university education. A painstakingly accurate and comprehensively detailed statement of the project, with an integrated analysis of the statutory provisions and erudite enunciation of the law, is found in the judgment of Bhagwati, J. in Naraindas, (1974) 3 SCR 624 if we may say so with respect, that a repeat performance here again may be supererogatory. We read that ruling into this judgment by incorporation, as it were, and content ourselves with a skeletal projection of the legislation with special reference to the key sections, viz., Ss. 3, 4 and 5 of the Madhya Pradesh Act. No. 13 of 1973. Its title is Prathamik, Middle School Tatha Madhyamik Shiksha (Pathya Pustakon Sambandhi Vyavastha) Adhiniyam (hereinoafter referred to, for short, as the 1973 Act.)

4. The respondent before us who was the petitioner before the High Court - is a private publisher. It may be cynical to say that text-books are commodity for consumers of schools education and there is big money in the trade especially when the private sector in the book business has been enjoying a ready market provided by the proliferation of schools and the obligatory purchase of text-books, once Government prescribes them. So, behind the veil of educational excellence, formulation of syllabi and competent text-books is the vast profit pouring into private publishers. In our system, unalloyed public interest litigation, though organisation crusading in the field, is yet a consummation devoutly to be wished, and private vested interests are the vociferous ventriloquists of public causes. Democratic participation in the justice process gains reality only when popular organs blossom from the desert and enter