one because of philanthropy animating the undertaking.
The Supreme Court visualising the necessity of suitable legislative step to restructure the definition of industry presenting a legislative synthesis, between judicial thesis and anti-thesis disclosed in two decades, laid down these principles holding‘ industry’ of wise import, in its ruling in the Bangalore Water Supply Case 1978. W ith this judgement several departments of the government and many statutory incorporations, have come within the canvass of the industry. Several charitable enterprises too have come within the canvass of industry, because so far as the workmen are concerned, it boots little whether they make available the products or services free to the poor. They contribute labour for wages and conditions of service. For them the charitable employer is exactly like a commercial employer exacting hard work, pay wages and treat them as human machine logs and nothing more. From the point of the workmen there is no charity. For worker charity must begin at home.
This expansive interpretation of‘ industry’ in the case of BWSSB 1978, by the Supreme Court, provided workmen a minimum protection to their entitlement of legal labour rights.
Now the Modi’ s BJP government in promotion the“ ease of doing business” and“ more ease of doing business” had done away with the labour laws earned by workmen of this country with their long, had struggles for more than a century in the past, replacing them with so called New Labour Codes, removing all entitlements of legal rights to the workers of this country.
In the present circumstances, due to the globalisation, liberalisation and privatization reforms of 1991, a far higher number of workers have moved to the private sector, out of the security of public employment. So the expansive September-2026
definition of industry, as entailed in the Triple test is even more necessary for the worker as a minimum legal protection for the entitlement of his rights. Particularly now in our country the‘ gig-worker’ economy is speedily expanding, the number of gig-workers expanding by more than one crore; who have no entitlement of legal rights of any kind even according to the New Labour Codes that came in to force. Added to this the system of out-sourcing employment, contract employment and casual employment – informal employment- is widely spreading leaving the workers with no means to protect their entitlement of their lights legally. This situation demands furthermore expansion of the definition of‘ industry’ bringing the service sector of gig-economy and like sectors of employment under the canvass of‘ industry’.
But a nine-judge bench of the Supreme Court by order dated 16- 02-2026 framed four questions concerning the correctness of the test in BWSSB and its relevance in the wake of Industrial Relations Code( IRC) 2020, which replaced ID Act 1947. With the legalistic approach, without taking the socioeconomic conditions of present day in to consideration, it is arguing that the IRC“ is an independent legislative enactment and must be interpreted on its own terms, having regard to its text, scheme and object”. It even opined that, the principles laid down in BWSSB Case shall not be regraded a“ sheet anchor” for the interpretation of the IRC should such a question arise in the future; forbidding the interpretation of‘ industry’ under the light of rich jurisprudence that was developed with BWSSB and after. Thus the nine-judge bench of Supreme Court made an attempt‘ to police the tools available for a future interpretive exercise’. It intends to remove as laws the base minimum protection and remedy available legally to workers of their entitlement to their rights. The Supreme Court conveniently refuses to take the reality that the underlying inequality between employer and workman has not narrowed since 1947 in to consideration, and also the fact that“ ease of doing business policy of the BJP government has widened the inequality”.
The one recourse of law offered to workers vide the protection of BWSSB’ s definition of“ industry” is sought to be made null and void, by the Supreme Court, through its judgement delivered on August 20, 2026, in tune with the will of the ruling-classes in power, proving itself( judiciary) not to be an independent institution to protect the rights of the people and the constitutional guarantees as is being touted for all these 80 years, but a part and parcel of the state machinery under the rule of rulingclasses.
This is another recent instance confirming once more that“ bourgeois jurisprudence is but the will of bourgeoisie class made in to law”; as has been clearly and categorically exported by“ Manifesto of the Communist Party” 178 years back by Karl Marx and Engles. �
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