BUDGET BY SHARED REVENUES 165
This new and enhanced standard of expenditure called for a revision of the shares of the Imperial and Provincial Governments in the joint revenues. But the revision had to be so devised that while it gave larger resources to the Provinces it obviated the necessity of making fixed assignments as much as possible; for the Government of India had learnt to its cost that fixed assignments on a large scale tended to make the resource side of the Provincial Finance rigid to such an uncomfortable degree that, if the variability of expenditure surpassed the expansibility of the revenue incorporated in the Provincial Budgets, it was perforce obliged to distribute benefactions to ease what would otherwise be a difficult situation. Secondly, these fixed assignments also created a certain degree of inequality as between the backward and the more advanced Provinces. In the advanced Provinces the fixed assignments formed a comparatively smaller part of their resources than they did in the case of the relatively backward Provinces, and, as larger expenditure could be undertaken by the Provinces only when their revenues expanded, the advanced Provinces, a larger part of whose resources were of an expanding nature, obtained a more favourable treatment than the relatively backward Provinces, a large part of whose resources were of a frozen character. This was rightly conceived by the Government of India as the reverse of what ought to have been, having regard to the fact that the needs of the backward Provinces were relatively more imperious than those of the advanced Provinces. To obviate this injustice the Government of India enhanced the shares of the backward provinces in the joint revenues by reducing per contra the fixed assignments made at the last revision. To the Punjab it gave .4 and to the Central Provinces .5 of the Land Revenue instead of .25 only. The share of Burma in the Land Revenue was raised to .66, and to make provision for the enhanced expenditure due to the addition of Upper Burma, and in lieu of the railway revenue withdrawn from it, Burma was allowed to appropriate .5 of the Excise instead of .25 only. The financial condition of the North-Western Provinces was not very happy. Its revenue had proved so very unprogressive that it advanced only 2 per cent. between 1892 and 1897. The treatment of the North-Western Provinces at the revision of 1892 was also a little unjust. The revision had left its revenues short by 5 lakhs of its standard expenditure, to be made up by reduction of its balances. To make