304 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
department, subject, however, to inquiry and control by the whole body. But in all cases on which any difficulty is likely to arise each minister, from motives not merely of prudence but of honour, takes the opinion of the Cabinet. When the precaution is taken the measure becomes the common act of the Ministry.”
Right or wrong there is a common co-ordinated policy which guides a unified government based on collective responsibility. But having made a partition of governmental work, dyarchy must be said to have introduced an element of divided responsibility in the Executive. It is true that the partition is not horizontal but vertical. It is also true that in setting the two parts to work it has not been provided that there should be two separate Legislatures for two separate executives ; or that each should make its own laws, control its own finance, frame its own budget, impose its own taxation, and raise its own loans ; or that each should have its separate staff for the administration of subjects allotted to it and have its own methods of recruitment, pay and pension for its services ; so that the two authorities might in fact have clearly defined spheres of their own exclusively within them. The Government of India had indeed suggested that some, if not all, of these concomitants of a typically dual executive should also be made a part of the dyarchical system adopted to carry on the government of the Provinces. Fortunately for the country the framers of the new constitution held [1]
“that wisdom lies not in equipping each of the different elements with a complete paraphernalia of its own, and trusting to their orbits lying sufficiently apart for collision to be avoided; but in taking every opportunity of bringing the two elements into contact sc as to induce the habits of joint action.” “It is our intention,” wrote the authors of the Joint Report, [2 ] “that the Government thus composed and with this distinction of functions shall discharge them as one Government,” and that “the Provincial budget should be framed by the Executive Government as a whole.” [3]
It was no doubt well to have modified the working of dyarchy by subjecting it to the interplay of two principles, one of division in order to give as clear a definition as possible of the several
1 Joint Report, p. 199. 2 Ibid, p. 180. 3 Ibid, p. 207.