THE EVOLUTION OF PROVINCIAL FINANCE IN BRITISH INDIA - Page 169

154 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES

tions only, grouped as Imperial. Others were classed as wholly Provincial. The remaining were placed in an intermediate category designated as joint and were in most part shared equally between the Imperial and the Provincial Governments. In those cases, however, where the provincialized expenditure exceeded the resources from the provincialized as well as the shared revenues, the balance instead of being provided as heretofore by fixed assignments from the Imperial exchequer was rectified for each Province by a fixed percentage on its land revenue—a wholly Imperial head of revenue except in the case of Burma, where the percentage was extended to the Imperial rice export duty and salt revenue as well.

Along with the enlargement of the scheme of Provincial Finance in 1882 the Government of India was also anxious to introduce simplicity and uniformity in the matter of grouping the different heads of revenue and expenditure under the three catgegories now established. It will be remembered that the agreements effected in

1877 were marked by diversity and intricacy. The same charges were not provincialized in all the Provinces. A charge which was Provincial in one was Imperial in another. Again, in transferring charges a grant was often broken up so that a part was made Provincial and a part reserved as Imperial. On the revenue side the arrangement was not a little intricate. The computations owing to the proviso in respect of the assigned revenues made the calculations far from simple. Both these defects were, however, removed when the settlements were framed in 1882, and it is to indicate what heads of revenue and expenditure were provincialized, what were imperialized, and what were divided and to what extent, that the following attempt is made.