z:\ ambedkar\vol-02\vol2-07.indd MK SJ+YS 21-9-2013/YS-8-11-2013 514
514 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
thoroughly representative and not merely representative as a museum is, where there are a few specimens of every species for the observation of the general onlooker; if every minority and every class which fears its existence will be jeopardised is placed on a position to make its influence felt, then I think in a Legislature of that sort there will be no harm in conceding the principle that Provincial responsibility may be introduced to the fullest extent. That is my first observation.
Making that a condition that the Legislatures shall be fully and adequately representative of all the classes, I see no objection to the subjects which are now reserved being transferred to popular control.
Coming to the question of whether the responsibility in the Provinces should be joint or should be individual I have not the slightest hesitation in saying that the responsibility not only should be joint but must be joint. I have been a member of Legislative Council, and I have seen how Ministries in the Provinces have worked. It has been a most painful experience for me, as it has been the experience, I believe, of many of those who have had the misfortune or the good fortune to be members of a Legislative Council, to find that Ministries have been working as a kind of loose confederation, without having any complete or unanimous view on a particular policy which they adopted. There have been divided counsels, and cases of Ministers not being very willing to support each other.
What has been the result? The result is this, that in no instance have we had any considered policy put forward by the Cabinet as a whole, worked out in detail and placed before the Legislative Council Things have been done by fits and starts, and I do not think we want our responsibility in future to be bungled in that fashion.
Turning now to the question of communal representation in the Cabinets, I must confess that I am not very much drawn to the suggestion which is often made that there should be communal representation in the Cabinet I am not, of course, oblivious of the fact; in fact, I am very conscious of it that if the minority communities are not represented in the Cabinet it is very possible, and even very likely, that in matters of administration which affect their daily lives their interests may be affected very prejudicially by the policy of Ministers whose dominant interest is communalism. I do not forget that for a moment, but my submission is that there is a better way of dealing with that sort of evil, and it seems to me that if the minorities could get constitutional and statutory guarantees laid down in the Constitutional Act itself against anything likely to injure their interests being done or left undone by the Cabinet, the danger which most of us apprehend from the fact that the Cabinets may be communally dominated, will vanish, and we shall not have much cause to insist on communal representation in the Cabinet
Although I am very desirous that the Chief Minister, whoever he is,