206 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
a view to any particular policy they decided to adopt, and of arranging for supplementary grants in any manner they chose. But such powers they never had. Indeed no greater proof could be furnished in support of the view that everything had remained imperial in status after 1870, as it was before 1870, than is afforded by these limitations on the working of Provincial Finance.
If separation of sources and contributions from the yield as a theory of the financial relationship between the Central and Provincial Government in India was incompatible with the facts of the case, what theory was there which could be said to have been compatible with the position as defined by law? We may at once proceed to state that the only theory of financial relationship between the two governments which accorded with facts and agreed with law was that of aggregation of the sources and distribution of the yield.
It may seem fallacious to speak of aggregation of sources when what the Government of India gave to the Provinces was assignment of revenues and shares of revenues. To this the reply is not difficult. It has already been made clear that Provincial Finance did not involve a de jure, separation of sources. Nor was there a de facto separation either. For as has been remarked before, all revenues whether assigned or reserved were collected into the Imperial treasury and were thence paid out on all approved Government transactions. Obviously, when all the revenues are thrown into a common pool, it cannot be said without unduly straining the imagination that what the Provinces were given were revenues. [1] The collections from all sources of revenue being inextricably mixed up, the only proper view is to say that what was given to the Provinces were funds. The expressions Budget by Assignments, Budget by Assigned or Shared Revenues are in a certain sense all fictitious phrases. In all the stages of Provincial Finance what the Provinces were supplied with were funds. Under the assignment stage the supply granted was a definitely fixed sum and the only difference made as a consequence of the replacement of Assignments by Assigned or Shared Revenues was that the supply, instead of being a fixed sum, was a sum
1 The remarks made by Captain Pretyman, M.P., in his evidence before the Royal Commission on local taxation in England with regard to the revenues assigned to Local Governments may be cited in this connection. He said: “I absolutely hold that it is imposible to say that you give a contribution from Imperial Taxation from a particular source. A man might just as well pour a bucket of water into a pond and then go and hook it out again and say that he had hooked out the same bucket of water. The taxes are paid into the Imperial Exchequer and the contribution is made from the Imperial Exchequer, and to say that you select a particular sum of money as the produce of a particular tax and that you hand that over is, I think a fallacious statement altogether.” Vol. 1 of Min. of Evid. C. 8763 of 1898, Q. 9873.