262 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
of dividend heads. To whom should they be handed over ? At the time the scheme of complete separation was contemplated the heads of revenue which were divided in all or some of the Provinces were land revenue, stamps, excise, income tax and irrigation. The authors of the Report on Constitutional Reforms proposed [1]
“……that the revenue from stamp duty should be discriminated under the already well-marked sub-heads General and Judicial ; and that the former should be made an Indian and the latter a provincial receipt. This arrangement will preserve uniformity in the case of commercial stamps where it is obviously desirable to avoid discrepancies of rates ; and it will also give the provinces a free hand in dealing with court-fee stamps and thus provide them with an additional means of augmenting their resources. Excise is at present entirely a provincial head in Bombay, Bengal, and Assam, and we see no valid reason why it should not now be made provincial throughout India…… Land revenue, which is far the biggest head of all, is at present equally shared between the Indian and all the provincial Governments, except that Burma gets rather more than one-half and the United Provinces get rather less…… Now land revenue assessment and collection is so intimately concerned with the whole administration in rural areas that the advantages of making it a provincial receipt are obvious…… Moreover, famine expenditure and expenditure on major irrigation works are for obvious reasons closely connected with land revenue, and if the receipts from that head are made provincial it logically follows that the Provinces should take over the very heavy liability for famine relief and protective works……We were told that in the days of dawning popular government in the Provinces it would be well that the provincial government should be able to fall back on the support of the Government of India (as, if the head were still divided, it would be able to do) when its land revenue policy was atttacked. [2] But it is just because divided heads are not
1 Report, pp. 165-7.
2 The land revenue policy of the Government has always been looked upon by the popular leaders, rightly or wrongly, with a certain degree of suspicion, and is always in danger of being attacked. For fear that the policy may be subverted under a popular Provincial Legislature to whose control land revenue as a provincial subject was subjected it provided by the Reservation of Bills Rules under Section 12 (1) of the Government of India Act, 1919, that—The Governor of any Governor’s province shall reserve for the consideration of the Governor-General any Bill, not having been previously sanctioned by the Governor-General, which has been passed by the legislative Council of the Province and