CHAPTER V
BUDGET BY ASSIGNED REVENUES
1877-78 TO 1881-82
The scheme of Provincial Budgets, the second stage of which we shall presently study, was launched not without mixed feelings. Boundless hopes were entertained, though not unmingled with a sense of misgiving. Just what was expected of the scheme may be correctly gauged from the remarks of Sir Richard Temple, who, when introducing the scheme in
1870, said :—
“We hope that this concession (of increased control over revenues and expenditure) will give the Local Governments an additional interest in the study and the enforcement of economy in expenditure; will afford them a just inducement to supplement their local receipts from time to time by methods either most acceptable to the people or least fraught with popular objection; will cause a more complete understanding to arise between the executive authorities and the tax-paying classes respecting the development of fiscal resources; will teach the people to take a practical share in the Provincial Finance, and lead them up gradually towards a degree of local self-government; and will thus conduce to administrative as well as financial improvement.” [1]
While entertaining these hopes he also took the opportunity of asking the Council to be prepared for disappointment, for he went on to remark:
“the hopes which I am expressing, however sanguinely, or confidently entertained, are after all but hopes, and like all other hopes may or may not be fairly realized. But let all this eventuate as it may, sure I am with certainty free from shade of doubt, that the measure is advantageous to the Imperial Budget of British India. For it will have the direct effect of definitely limiting, for the present, the expenditure from the general Exchequer on certain important branches of civil expenditure, the very branches indeed, where, from the progressive state of the age, the demands for increased outlet have most arisen,
1 Annual financial statement for the official years 1860-1 to 1873-4, with Appendices : Calcutta, Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing,
1873, p. 348.