238 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
statement explaining the points he wanted to make. I quite appreciate, and indeed I am very grateful to him for having cut short his speech and gave his time to enable me to make a statement.
Sir, this is a matter in which I think it is better to be very candid and say that the Government of India so far had really no mineral policy. It may be a ground for complaint. But it need not be a ground for surprise. The responsibility for the absence of a mineral policy has been sought to be placed in certain quarters at the door of the Geological Survey of India. I am sure that that is a wrong charge ; and I propose to devote the first few minutes that I have in order to dispel such an impression.
I think it will be admitted that the mineral policy of any government is necessarily dependent upon the industrial policy of that government. Minerals necessarily play a great in the industrial development of the country and if the country has no industrial policy, obviously there cannot be a mineral policy at all. This House is aware that until the Government of India decided to have as its aim and object the reconstruction of the economic and industrial life of this country in the post-war period Government in this country played very small part in the industrialisation of the country.
Dr. P. N. Banerjea : What a pity !
The Honourable Dr. B. R. Ambedkar : Whether it is a matter for pity or whether it is a matter of anger is not for the moment my concern. All that I am trying to show is that if there has been no mineral policy, the fault is not of the Geological Survey of India. The fault lay with the Government of the day ; the fault perhaps lay with the Legislature and, it may be, with other organisations which were interested in the economic and industrial life of the country.
The second reason why the Geological Survey did not play the part that geological surveys in other parts of the world do play is largely due to the fact that this is one of the departments which has always been under-staffed. I would like to tell the House a little history with regard to the staffing and the provision of the technical personnel of the Geological Survey of India. In 1920 sanction was obtained for an