OTHER GRIEVANCES 435
- Of course, Government may say that it is not bound to do publicity work for parties and communities, and that the parties and communities may do their own publicity. But that is not the case here. The Government of India, as I have shown, docs engage itself very much in this work of publicity. And when a Government does it, it is bound to treat all parties on equal footing in the matter of publicity and give a true and correct picture of the movements and forces operating in the country.
VIII. Closed-door in Government Contracts
A Good part of Government needs in Public Works is carried out not departmentally but by contracts. This is so in normal times. In war times the work done for Government by the contract system has expanded several hundred fold. I can speak only of the Central Public Works Department. The list of approved contractors maintained, by the Central Public Works Department is 1,171. Of these, I am told, there is only one contractor belonging to the Scheduled Castes. The rest of them are Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims. It should be possible for Government to arrange things in such a manner as to make its contract system allow an open door to members of all communities to profit by it. There are many persons of the Scheduled Castes who could be trusted to carry out a Government contract. Already many members of the scheduled castes are working as employees of Hindus, Muslim or Sikh contractors. The result is that the Hindu, Muslim or Sikh contractors are taking profit while the Scheduled Caste men are working on a mere wage.
There is not much difficulty in getting a certain number of men from the Scheduled Castes put on the list of approved contractors. But what is important is to enable them to get a contract. There are two rules in the matter of Government contracts :—
(1) That a contract is to be given generally to a contractor whose tender is the lowest;
(2) That Government is not bound to accept the lowest tender.
- It is therefore, a mattter of discretion which is exercised by the Officer in charge whether a contract will go to a particular contractor