184 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
On a purely a priori consideration of the matter, nothing could have been more natural than to suppose that the system of Provincial Finance thus established in British India was independent in its organization. Indeed it is difficult to imagine how one could emerge from the study of its origin and development without such a faith having silently grown upon him. But if Provincial Finance was independent in its organization, we should find the Provinces in possession of financial powers which are commonly associated with the functioning of independent States. For the immediate purpose of finding out whether or not Provincial Finance was an independent system of finance, we may take the freedom of budgeting and everything that is involved in it as an evidence of the existence of these powers. Independent budget powers would involve the power to determine the services which, according to the needs of the country, a good government should undertake, and to decide upon the mode of raising either by taxation or loan sufficient money to meet the expenditure upon those services. Alongside these powers the budget: system entails the obligation of keeping accounts and submitting them to independent audit.
Applying these tests to the Provincial Budget, the origin and growth of which have been treated in the foregoing parts of this study, we cannot predicate a tithe of the independence which characterizes the budgets of sovereign States. On the contrary, the budget system introuced into India with regard to the different Provinces was accompanied by the most stringent limitations. They were given a budget without its powers, and they bore the obligations of accounts and audit just because they were left free within the limits of their budgets. Why these limitations were imposed will be explained when we come to scrutinize the ways of enlarging the scope of Provincial Finance. it must, however, be emphasized that these limitations formed an integral part of the scheme, and the stringency of the former had grown pari passu with the scope and proportions of the latter. In fact they defined the law of the Constitution of Provincial Budgets. A complete comprehension of the operation of Provincial Finance in British India is therefore not possible without a thorough knowledge of its rules of government. Such being the importance of these rules it cannot but be to our advantage to analyse them at this stage.