158 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
On the transactions of 1881-82 the Government expected to gain £ 470,000 a year. Of this sum, however, it returned to the Central Provinces £ 77,900, for improving the position of the subordinate civil services and other general purposes; to Madras, £ 20,000, for provincial public works; and to the N.W.P. and Oudh, £326,000, of which £ 10,000 was for additional Kanungoes in Oudh, and the remainder, £ 316,000, for a remission of local taxation. Besides these benefactions the Government of India gave for a favourable start to Bengal, £ 285,000; Burma, £20,000; N.W.P., £ 55,000, to be added to their balances before the close of the year 1881-2. These benefactions, which amounted to £ 496,000 a year, were expected to turn the annual gain of £ 470,000 into an annual loss of £ 26,000 to the Imperial exchequer. [1]
In this connection it must also be recalled that the Government of India reimbursed the Provincial Governments of the amount of the benevolences it had levied on them in the years 1879-80 and 1880-1. But not long after the revision of
1882 the financial position of the Government of India, which had permitted of such a liberal treatment, suffered a reverse, and the necessity for levying benevolences on the balances of the Provincial governments reappeared in 1886-7. In presenting the financial Statement for that year the Finance Member of the Government of India argued :—
“22. Since the estimates for 1885-6 were presented......
Indian administration and finance have entered on a
new phase. The brief period of rest which the country
had enjoyed since 1882 had drawn to a close...... By the
events of the late years in Central Asia, India finds herself
almost in contact with one of the great European Powers,
and she cannot hope to escape the necessity which the
position imposes on her of increasing her military strength.
Events impending have occurred which have changed, as
it was known they must change, the face of our estimates,
and have thrust us violently out of the peaceful path of
internal progress in which we had hoped to have been
left undisturbed.”
Among the other means employed to weather the storm the Government of India resorted a second time to nibbling at the provincial resources, and gathered a sum of £400,000 in the year
1886-7 by appropriating from their balances the above amount.
1 Financial Statement for 1882-83, p. 15.