Discuss the significance of the 'industry' test evolved in BWSSB vs A. Rajappa and its relevance in the era of the Industrial Relations Code, 2020.

The definition of "industry" under Section 2(j) of the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947 was the gateway to every labour protection the Act offered. In Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board vs A. Rajappa (1978), a seven-judge Bench settled that gateway through a wide functional test whose logic survives even after the statute's repeal [3].

Significance of the BWSSB test

• It laid down the triple test — a systematic activity, carried on through cooperation between employer and employee, for the production or distribution of goods and services [3].
• It shifted focus to the nature of the activity, not the identity of the employer, so statutory boards, hospitals, municipal bodies and educational institutions could not escape the Act merely because the State ran them [3].
• Consequently, lakhs of workers in such establishments gained access to conciliation, adjudication and retrenchment safeguards.
• Its reach provoked a legislative pushback — the 1982 Amendment meant to narrow it was never made operative, leaving a judge-made definition as working law for over four decades [3].
• Doubts persisted: State of U.P. vs Jai Bir Singh (2005) 5 SCC 1 referred it onward, reaching a nine-judge Bench in 2017 [3].

Relevance under the Industrial Relations Code, 2020

• The IRC, 2020 came into force on 21 November 2025, repealing the ID Act 1947, Trade Unions Act 1926 and Standing Orders Act 1946 as part of the consolidation of 29 labour laws into four Codes [1][2].
• The reference thus became largely academic, yet the Bench ruled on 20 August 2026, some judges holding it required no answer while declining to unsettle the 1978 test [3].
• Since the Code retains "industry" as its threshold concept, BWSSB jurisprudence — especially on sovereign and welfare functions — will guide its interpretation.

The BWSSB test endures because it defined who counts as a worker, not merely what a statute said. Carrying its purposive spirit into the Codes, while clarifying sovereign-function boundaries, would align labour governance with Articles 39 and 43 and SDG-8's decent work goal.