z:\ ambedkar\vol-02\vol2-08.indd MK SJ+YS 21-9-2013/YS-8-11-2013 627
IN THE FEDERAL STRUCTURE COMMITTEE 627
Government of India say that we shall lose all our revenue on Opium exports, which amounts to about 2 crores, but shall still retain a small sum of 10 or
15 lakhs from the sale of medical Opium. That shows how meagre is this source of revenue for the Federal Government.
The third source of revenue which has been assigned to the Federal Government by the Sub-Committee is the Salt-tax. Now, as we all know, this source has been a matter of contention and has been dragged into the vortex of Indian politics ; and, if the Congress Party had its way, this tax would vanish altogether. Now, apart from the question of whether the Congress would succeed in removing the tax altogether, it is absolutely certain that this tax. which is so intimately bound up with the standard of living of the ordinary masses of the people in India, can never be depended on to give a very large source of revenue to the Federal Government.
Lastly, you have the Corporation tax, which is suggested by the SubCommittee as a source of revenue for the Federal Government. I am informed that its yield is somewhere about 3 crores, so that obviously it is at the present moment a source of very small dimensions. It seems to me that, if we agree that industrialisation is a very important thing for the prosperity of India, and if we further agree that, for industrialisation, the incorporation of capital is also necessary, then I am afraid that we cannot increase this tax to any very large extent, for fear of penalising incorporation.
This is what I feel regarding the revenue side of the Budget. Coming to the expenditure side, the Sub-Committee has proceeded upon the view that the Government at the Centre will have very little to do except to defend. I do not agree that that can be the view of the function of any government in modern times. There was a time in history when people thought that the proper function of a government was to provide for nothing but anarchy plus the constable ; but I think we have changed. We believe that the government must provide the constable, but it must also provide welfare. It seems to me—this is my personal view, the view of other members may be different—that the Government at the Centre, for some time at any rate, will have to take upon itself certain welfare functions which to my mind are peculiar to India. I think, and I am going to propose elsewhere, that the Government at the Centre should take upon itself the burden of securing and helping, to some extent at any rate, the welfare of what we call the Depressed Classes. I want that the problem of the Depressed Classes, and the problem of removing Untouchability, should not hereafter be looked upon as a purely Local or Provincial problem. I want that it should be looked upon as a national problem in which the whole of India is interested. I want the Government at the Centre to take upon itself the duty of bringing the jungle tribes, which number probably as many as the Depressed Classes themselves, within the pale of civilisation. I want that Government to take