THE ENLARGEMENT OF ITS SCOPE 215
creating new or abolishing old appointments or revising the establishments of their departments? If under the system of Provincial Finance the Provinces were responsible for the services they managed, why should they not have been trusted with powers to make needful changes in the agencies which carried out those services?
Further, it was asked, what justification was there for the limitations on the preparation and execution of the Provincial Budgets ? If separate Budgets had been carved for each of the Provinces out of what once formed an Imperial Budget for the whole of India, why should the Provinces have been required to submit their Budgets to the Government of India? Merely as a matter of conveying information the requirement was comparatively of a trifling character. But why should the Government of India have claimed to alter their estimates and compel them to abide by the grants as fixed by it? Was such a scrutiny of Provincial Budgets a cover for dictating a policy to the Provincial Governments? If this was so, what was the scope for initiative and freedom left to the Provinces which it was the primary object of Provincial Finance to promote and of the permanent settlements to ensure? Again, why should a Provincial Government have been required to come to the Government of India for a supplementary grant as it had to do where the excess over estimates could not be met by reappropriations, even when it had balances to its credit so sufficient as not to be reduced below the required minimum by a draft to meet the excess?
For each of these limitations which fettered the Provincial Governments and contracted the scope of Provincial Finance, the Government of India was of course ready with abundant excuses. [1] In the matter of revenue restrictions it urged that the revenues of India were its constitutional possession for the proper disposal of which it was responsible to the Secretary of State and Parliament. That being the case it was fair that the Government of India should require that the sources assigned to the Provinces should not be alienated nor spent on unauthorized grants or unapproved services. Again, being responsible for all services it followed that the Government of India could not have afforded to weaken its position as to managing the resources of
1 In this connection, cf. Evidence of Mr. J. S. Meston before the Royal Commission on Decentralization. Mit. of Evid., Vol. X, Q. 44807—45336.