224 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
ment involving separate treasury system and separate ways and means, probably because they anticipated that as such a proposal meant separate possession of provincial revenues the Government of India would raise a constitutional objection to such a demand. All they asked for was a power to spend part of their balances up to a defined amount without reference to the Government of India. The suggestion was accepted [1] as “reasonable,” for its consequences, provided it was not a big amount, would have been not a deprivation of the Government of India’s power of control over nor a disturbance in the ways and means, but only a slight increase in the cash balances of the country.
Thus it is clear that the scope of Provincial Finance was unduly restricted by a too narrow and too legalistic an interpretation of the constitutional obligations of the Government of India. From the above analysis of the suggestions made by the Provincial Governments it is clear that without making any breach in the constitutional position of the Government of India it would have been possible, with a more charitable view of their sense of responsibility, to effect the changes they desired. Such concessions would have made Provincial Finance as self-sufficient and as autonomous as it was capable of being made. The system would no doubt have rested on pure convention: none the less its benefits would have been as real as though it was based on law.
But the time had arrived when the financial arrangements could no longer be looked upon as a matter which concerned the Central and Provincial Governments. There arose a third party whose counsels were rejected in 1870 but which now insisted on having a voice in the disposition of the financial resources of the country. It was the Indian taxpayer, and his clamour had grown so strong that it compelled the powers that be to alter the system so as to permit him to take the part he claimed to play.
The changes that followed upon this event will form the subject-matter of Part IV.
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1 R.C.D., Mit of Evid., Vol. X, Q. 44900.