CHAPTER VI
BUDGET BY SHARED REVENUES
1882-83 TO 1920-21
At every step in the direction of enlarging the Provincial Budgets the crucial question, as has already been pointed out, was with regard to the difficulties of balancing the revenues and charges proposed to be incorporated therein. The two steps heretofore taken, one in 1871 and another in 1877, in the direction of the evolution of Provincial Finance, were marked by two distinct methods of balancing the Provincial Budgets. On the former occasion the Imperial Government supplied the Provincial Governments with fixed lump sum assignments from the Imperial treasury. On the latter occasion this mode of supply was partly replaced by assigning certain sources of revenue for the use of provincial Governments. The plan of assigned revenues, though it went a great way to remove the most serious defect of the measures of 1871-2, which transferred to the Local Governments the responsibility of meeting charges which had an undoubted tendency to increase, with income which, although not quite fixed, had little room for development, fell short of the requirements of Provincial Finance from the standpoint of elasticity. Superior to those of 1871 though they were, the measures of 1877 were so short of the fullest requirements of elasticity in finance that the Government of Madras refused to accept the enlarged scheme and preferred to abide by the arrangements of 1871. The scheme of 1877 was not offered to Burma or Assam. But when the Government of India made such an offer in 1879 it was obliged to turn over a new leaf, for, though the difficulty of meeting expanding charges with fixed assignments was overcome in some of the provinces by economy and good management, it was considerably felt by the province of Burma. The expenditure of the province in the seven years preceding the scheme of Provincial Finance aggregated to Rs. 1,98,45,970, while the assignments for the following seven years, aggregated apart from special additions, Rs. 2,20,22,770, showing an excess of Rs. 21,76,800, in all or